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The Revival 

BY 

BISHOP WILLIAM F. McDOWELL 

RBV. EDWARD B. CRAWFORD 

PRESIDENT CHARLES J. LITTLE 

REV. J. H. MacDONALD 

REV. JOHN THOMPSON 

REV. W. E. TILROE, D. D. 

REV. P. H. SWIFT, D. D. 

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY 

REV. J. H. MacDONALD 

PASTOR OF THE OAKLAND METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEWYORK: EATON AND MAINS 










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3EP. 11 1905 

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COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



EXPLANATORY. 



These addresses were first delivered before 
the Chicago Preachers' Meeting, and were de- 
signed to awaken a more general interest in re- 
vival work. They were received with great favor, 
and were highly successful in accomplishing the 
purpose for which they were planned. This fact 
is the warrant for giving them a still wider circu- 
lation, in the hope that they may prove as stimu- 
lating to those who may read them as to those to 
whom they were originally delivered. 

The Editor. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Minister as a Soul-Winner, 7 

Bishop W. F. McDowell. 

Personal Evangelism, 25 

Rev. Edward B. Crawford, Pastor of the 

Western Avenue Church. 

The Religious Revival in History, - - - 40 
Rev. Charles J. Little, D. D., LX,. D., Presi- 
dent of Garrett Biblical Institute. 

The Human and Divine Elements in a Re- 
vival, -------- 64 

Rev. J. H. MacDonald, Pastor of the Oak- 
land Church. 

Continuous Evangelism, and the Sunday- 
Night Service, 92 * 

Rev. John Thompson, Pastor of Grace 
Church. 

Chicago Methodism, 107 

Rev. W. E. Tilroe, D. D., Presiding Elder 
of Chicago District. 

New Paths Through an Old Forest, - - 119 
Rev. P. H. Swift, D. D., Pastor of the Aus- 
tin Church. 



THE MINISTER AS A SOUL-WINNER. 

Bishop William F. McDowell. 

The statement of this theme is redundant, 
and somewhat misleading. It suggests that per- 
haps a minister might be something else than 
a soul-winner; that he might be a minister, and 
not a soul-winner at all; or that, perhaps, win- 
ning souls is an incident in the business of be- 
ing a minister. One would hardly speak of a 
lawyer as a practitioner, of a physician as a 
healer, of a merchant as a business man. This 
is the business of these men. They do, and 
must do, many things besides. This is supreme. 
So the minister must do many things. How 
many, only a busy modern minister knows. But 
if he be not a soul-winner he is not at the heart 
of his task. 

Let us clear up one or two matters at the 
start. Winning souls and holding revival-meet- 
ings are not equivalent terms. Indeed, our mod- 
ern use of the word evangelist is distinctly nar- 
rower than the great term soul-winner. Nor is 
7 



8 The; Revival. 

this noble term identified exclusively witK any 
method, however useful and honored. Nor yet 
is it monopolized by any class of ministers, or 
by any theory of the ministry, or any conception 
of the Church. These things it seems necessary 
to say at the beginning. 

We must briefly state at the outset, also, cer- 
tain fundamental assumptions which are taken for 
granted in the discussion that follows and in all 
this series of addresses: 

1. The lives of men are lost. It is still true 
that the Son of man is seeking and saving the- 
lost. Men are much more than unfortunate. 
"The train is not simply late, there has been a 
wreck." "We owe Christ more than our thanks, 
we owe him our lives." If modern science and 
philosophy have made anything emphatic, it is 
the sad and solid truth that men are lost and 
are being lost. They are not only fallen, but 
falling. 

2. There is a way to recover these lost lives. 
The world is not in hopeless case. We do not 
handicap our efforts by doubts as to the possi- 
bility of recovery. The opened fountain is ade- 
quate and flowing. We do not doubt either the 
person of Christ or his work. His power is not 
gone nor going. There is no other name, but 
no other name is needed. There is only one 



The; Minister as a Soul-Winner. 9 

cure, but that cure is sufficient. The task is tre- 
mendous, but the power of the Person is equal 
to the task. 

3. The Christian minister stands somehow in 
the center of this task. He is the minister of 
the saving Christ to men needing salvation. 
There are many questions, some of them are 
burning at times and for a time, but the minis- 
ter's one great question, always burning, is the 
question of bringing men and the Savior to- 
gether. He is vitally related to many things. 
He is at the center of this. 

These fundamental assumptions we take for 
granted, and do not argue them at all. I inter- 
pret my theme as giving me the warrant for the 
thesis that the minister must be a soul-winner, 
no matter what his theory of his ministry may be. 
Men are rather fond of classifying themselves 
and their preaching. They have heard of the 
historic types, and like to range themselves un- 
der one or another of the main divisions. In this 
audience this morning are men who somewhat 
proudly rate themselves as didactic or teaching 
preachers. It is thought by many to be a supe- 
rior order. I have no quarrel with this theory. 
I believe in all good types, and exclude none 
from my sympathy. The teaching ministry is 
absolutely essential in the Christian Church. 



to The Revival. 

One could wish that it might be both multiplied 
and improved. Still I must ask you if being a 
teaching minister is, in your judgment, a good 
excuse for not being a soul-winner? You teach 
the truth, and you do well; but are any set free 
by the truth you preach? Are you content to 
teach many and to gather none? You choose 
fitting subjects and treat them ably, but do you 
choose noble objects and bend everything to 
them? Didactic preaching in the Christian 
Church can only be saved from death and con- 
tempt by an evangelistic purpose and aim. 

Or you pride yourself upon the perfection of 
your order of worship. This properly grows 
among us. God is the God of order. No wor- 
ship of Him can be too perfect. He is not 
pleased with carelessness and slovenliness in His 
house. He loves, I doubt not, to have it all done 
decently and in order. There is inspiration in a 
noble liturgy nobly rendered. We have seen 
strong men subdued by a perfectly conducted 
communion service. But I ask you again, does 
the liturgy lead men to life? Is a perfect ritual 
a substitute for soul-winning ? It ought to be an 
aid. The service is not perfect until it has led 
men to put away the evil from their eyes. 

Or, again, you rather scorn both the didactic 
and the liturgical theories. You affect the prac- 



The Minister as a Soul-Winner. ii 

tical in your preaching. You get down to men's 
lives. You deal with common, every-day ex- 
istence. You discuss duties, personal, social, 
civic, and have precious little use for those other 
theories. Softly now. "The soul of all improve- 
ment is the improvement of the soul." Does 
practical preaching excuse you from being a 
soul-winner? Is it very practical unless it does 
win some ? 

Or you belong to the class that counts itself 
as evangelistic. You have not been moved by 
anything said thus far. Well, I must say a word 
which may not be understood, but the term soul- 
winner is a much larger term than evangelist as 
the latter term is used in our modern speech. I 
am trying to lift every type of our ministry to its 
highest level. That highest level is the level of 
winning souls, which means winning lives from 
wrong to right, from sin to holiness, from Satan 
to Christ, from self to God. If a minister of 
any type be not doing this to all classes, is he a 
real minister of Christ to men at all ? A thousand 
useful things he may be doing; but if he is not 
doing this, is he at the heart of his ministry ? 

The time was when our fathers were not very 
strong either in didactic or liturgical lines, but 
they had the grand passion for winning men. 
Their ministry was mighty at that point. And 



12 The Revival. 

a more practical ministry never was known. 
Men's lives were transformed, ethically renewed 
by the saving power of Christ. Our Presby- 
terian friends conducted a more orderly service 
and had a more didactic ministry. Each great 
Church had its strength and its weakness. No 
Church can be permanently strong which is 
strong on only one line. They are becoming 
evangelistic. Let us bless God for it. We have 
become didactic and orderly. Bless God for 
that. The Church that holds the future and the 
present is the Church which is didactic and or- 
derly, and practical, and is aflame with the fire 
that burned in the heart of Christ, the Savior of 
men. It is not a smaller or narrower theory 
of Church life that we need, but an infinitely 
broader and warmer one. 

The statement of my theme warrants me in 
asking a few personal questions at this point. I 
ask them in our Master's name. We are here 
together, a company of His men. His presence 
makes it very light here. We can see things 
in the light of His countenance. 

First. Have you been a soul-winner? We 
are not all young men. We are usually very 
sensitive to their duties. I am urged to deal 
faithfully with them. But I have also a keen 
and almost consuming anxiety about the men 



The Minister as a Soul-Winner. 13 

of my own age and older. Some of them were 
soul-winners once. Some of them never were. 
Some have ceased. Some think themselves too 
old to begin. How does your record look this 
morning as we sit here in this bright light? 
When my Conference class had been preaching 
twenty years we held a reunion, the ten of us. 
We compared experiences with perfect frank- 
ness and fidelity. One of the men spoke mod- 
estly of his obscure charges and obscure work 
during those years. He rejoiced in the more 
conspicuous positions that had come to some of 
the others. We made him confess that in the 
twenty years he had seen more than two thou- 
sand souls won to Christ. Then "we were smit- 
ten in our faces as with a great light." We saw 
in that light what real values were. Men here 
were soul-winners in their early ministry. When 
did you cease to be? Why did you cease? The 
passion for this and the skill for it ought to in- 
crease with our years. A man past fifty ought 
to be fairly irresistible in this matter. 

Second. Are you a soul-winner now? That 
question implies two or three others. Have you 
ceased to be what you once were? Have you 
begun to be what you ought to be ? Do you con- 
tinue in well doing? Some men have ceased to 
be what they were. This is one of the tragedies 



14 The; Revival. 

of the ministry. In their early years they had 
a consuming passion for winning men to Christ. 
No other success satisfied them. A year with- 
out this triumph was a bitter year in their min- 
istry. If they carried up no such trophies to 
Conference they went with heavy hearts. Fail- 
ure to win souls looked to them like God's sen- 
tence of disapproval. There are men here who 
remember to-day how a quarter of a century 
ago they cried unto God through the long night 
that He would give them converts. The desire 
was as a fire shut up in their bones. 

"And some have never loved thee, Lord, 
And some have lost the love they had." 

They make easy excuse now for a failure 
which once cut them to the quick. They have 
brought up the benevolences; they have paid the 
church debt; they have cleaned up the church 
records; they have built a new church or re- 
paired an old parsonage. Is it not so? And do 
you like it? And will you keep on at this rate? 

Some have not begun. They did not start to 
be soul-winners, and the habits of another kind 
of ministry have become fixed upon them. The 
passion is lacking. We are here in a family 
gathering, my dear brethren, looking honestly at 
our lives. It is very light here. His coun- 



The; Minister as a Soul-Winner. 15 

tcnance makes it so. As you look at your life 
what do you see? Do you like what you see? 
Does He like it, do you think? 

Third. If you have failed to be a soul-win- 
ner, why have you failed? Has your own spirit 
been lacking? Have your own efforts been 
slack? Or has your theology been at fault? It 
may have been new theology, or old theology, 
or false theology; it was not good theology un- 
less it was good at the core. A certain scholar 
in our Church read a paper a few years ago on 
the new views of the old Bible. When he had 
finished, a plain old man arose and asked one 
question: "Will these new views save souls?". 
Certain ones present thought the question an im- 
pertinence, but the scholar who had read the 
paper made this reply in substance: "Souls are 
not saved by views, new or old, but the question 
in its manifest meaning is vital and proper. The 
Bible is the record of God's soul-saving move- 
ment and purpose. The views of the structure 
and origin of the Bible must minister to the 
Bible's purpose as a soul-saving book." Men 
are not saved by a right view of the Pentateuch, 
but by a right relation to Jesus Christ. The cen- 
ter of a theology is the Redeemer. In some 
places men are shouting old views out of which 
the life has gone, in others new views which 



1 6 The; Revival. 

have no saving life in them. And the result is 
just defeat and failure. 

Or are you failing because you are not will- 
ing to pay the price? Holding public meetings 
is hard work. Holding personal interviews is 
even harder. There is no monopoly of method. 
The brass band, the torchlight procession, and 
the enthusiastic political meeting influence some 
kinds of voters. They attract the notice of all 
kinds. The revival of the traditional type has 
been one great agency for winning souls. Test 
this house, and you will see. Test your congre- 
gation, and you will see. But as Dr. Dennis 
says, "The evangelistic method should not be 
allowed to monopolize the evangelistic aim which 
should itself pervade all methods." But no 
method is easy. If you face an audience with 
the true soul-winning passion, and plead with a 
thousand in Christ's name and in Christ's stead, 
you will at the end perceive that virtue has gone 
out of you. If you sit alone with one man in a 
Christ-like grapple with his soul, caring for that 
one soul with something of the care that was 
in Gethsemane and on Calvary, you will know 
that again virtue has gone out of you. No 
method is easy. You are not set to save methods, 
but to save men. Therefore use the ways that 



The: Minister as a Soul-Winner. 17 

are useful ; old ways, new ways, all ways, but no 
way is easy. And no way is automatic. 

Or do you fail at the point of wisdom and 
good judgment? Your motive is all right. You 
have the divine passion, but still fail. I read the 
other day that exceedingly interesting study in 
homiletics, the description of the Iowa corn train. 
The experts had been testing the corn crop in 
Iowa, and had found out that of the corn planted 
hi that State eighteen per cent was dead, nine- 
teen per cent was low in vitality, and only sixty- 
three per cent was good seed. The crops were 
not up to their best because of poor seed, poor 
planting of that seed, poor preparation of the 
seed-bed, the planting of deteriorated corn, and 
the poor care of that which was actually good. 
And the government gives itself to the task of 
helping those Iowa farmers raise better crops. 
It suggests a theme, "The Farmer as a Corn- 
raiser;" and that sounds very much like our 
theme. But what about the corn you planted 
yesterday ? It is not many months since I heard 
a man with a thousand people before him, plant- 
ing a message which was as dead as death itself. 
A true woman came home from one of the finest 
churches in New York and said: "It was all 
well enough in every respect save one : it did not 
2 



1 8 The; Revival. 

matter." The seed was so low in vitality that 
it was not worth planting. Two-fifths of all that 
corn might just as well not have been planted 
at all. I heard an evangelist shouting himself 
hoarse over dead doctrines. I heard a theologian 
do the same thing without the shouting. What 
would the experts find if by divine tests they ex- 
amined the grain we have planted for a twelve- 
month? We had fifty Sundays, or a hundred 
services. Did we plant dead corn on twenty of 
those Sundays, or at forty of those services? 
Many a truth has Ceased to be vital. May the 
Lord of life help us to preach the truth that is 
alive ! We are orthodox enough, but are lacking 
in vitality. 

Or we do this planting badly. We take good 
vital truth and plant it in untempered emotions, 
which are so hot that the truth smothers ; or in 
intellectuality, which is so cold that the truth 
freezes; or in a will which is so hard that the 
truth can not make its way. Truth must be 
planted in life. It may get in through the feel- 
ings, or the intellect, or the will, but it must 
grow in them all if it is to have its chance. Those 
historic revivals which have been permanent and 
not transitory have made their appeal to the whole 
life of man. Those which have come to nothing 
have made a partial and incomplete entrance 



The Minister as a Soul-Winner. 19 

into life. Some of the current revivals are 
doomed for the same reason. 

The statement of the theme warrants an- 
other question. What will you do, and when 
will you do it ? This is really a double question ; 
but a good resolution must take effect in time. 
We have been looking together at our history. 
There has been a solemn searching of heart. 
Even those who have done their best are not 
pleased with what they have done. What shall 
we now do ? What will you now do in this mat- 
ter? May the searchings of heart be matched 
by great resolves of heart as we sit here! Not 
everything can be accomplished by a good reso- 
lution, but nothing can be achieved without it. 
What will you young men do? What will you 
old ones do? It is light enough here in His 
presence to enable us to see our way into a bet- 
ter future. Where will you begin to win souls? 
It would seem natural to begin at the nearest 
place. Ministers have a way of praying for a 
hundred souls. That seems to be a favorite 
number. But such prayers are often useless and 
fruitless because they are so vague. If any man 
here is to win a hundred souls this year, they 
will be found among the people whose names 
are in the city directory, who live on the same 
street with you. They are not floating around in 



20 The; Revival. 

the air, waiting to be brought down by a prayer 
or a gun. They are the husbands of women who 
already belong to your Church, or wives of men 
who already belong. They are children of par- 
ents already on your rolls, or they are the par- 
ents of children already in the Church; or they 
are the neighbors of yourself and your people. A 
pastor once told me that he closed his revival 
because they ran out of material at the meetings. 
He thought it a great triumph. When he came 
to examine his Church record he found that he 
had more than three hundred unconverted peo- 
ple in the families on his record. His special 
revival meetings were over, but his work as a 
soul-winner had just begun. 

I said this in one of the Conferences. A 
young pastor took his visiting list from his 
pocket, and began to study it even as I spoke. 
That list had new meaning for him as he studied 
it in this light. He became absorbed in the fasci- 
nating task. He had asked not to be returned to 
his old charge. He was returned. He reached 
the charge on Tuesday. Wednesday he went 
down street and into a bank. The president was 
not a Christian, though his wife was. The pas- 
tor had told them that he did not expect to re- 
turn. The president reminded him of it when 
he came in. Then all at once it came over this 



The; Minister as a Soul- Winner. 21 

young pastor that if he would win a hundred 
souls, this must probably be one of them. Why 
not begin at once? He turned to the president 
of the bank and said : "I did not want to come 
back, but I must have come for some good pur- 
pose. Possibly I have come back on your ac- 
count." There was something in his tone that 
had not been in it before. To his surprise the 
president changed tone, and replied with mani- 
fest feeling, "May be you have." Inside of five 
minutes they were on their knees together in 
that office, and a man was won to Christ. Be- 
fore Christmas that young pastor had won sev- 
enty-eight of the hundred for whom he began at 
Conference to pray. Only then he began to in- 
dividualize his prayers, and that made personal 
his efforts. Here is your field. It is not far off 
nor unrelated to you. It is at hand, and it is 
white for the harvest. 

How will you begin? Many men begin at 
some far-off point as though they did not ex- 
pect any result until some elaborate campaign 
of preparation and siege had been completed. 
They spend weary weeks in that dismal business 
known as working up the Church. It usually 
succeeds in wearing out the Church and in ad- 
vertising to the unsaved that the Church is not 
yet ready for them. One of the most success- 



22 The Revival. 

fill pastors in our Church told a company of us 
that he had quit that process forever. He be- 
gins his revivals now with a conversion or two. 
This is the true way to prepare. Nothing so 
surely warms up a Church as a conversion be- 
fore its eyes. The revival has begun when that 
takes place. There is no need then to urge peo- 
ple to come. People can not be kept away from 
the Church in which there is something actually 
going on. 

I am warranted also in saying that this busi- 
ness of soul-winning is chiefly a direct process. 
There is too much indirect evangelism abroad 
to-day. Famous men not a few have forsaken 
the old-fashioned direct grapple with the unsaved 
while they have given themselves to an indirect 
effort to save men. These indirect evangelists 
have told good people how to be better people, 
and how to get other people to become good peo- 
ple. They have held meetings to correct the 
theology of the Church and the day, and to pro- 
mote the spirituality of the Church. And this is 
not evangelism or soul-winning at all. It re- 
verses the true process in each case. Nothing 
wins so few souls as these indirect efforts. Noth- 
ing so surely corrects a false theology or revives 
a Church which is spiritually feeble as the win- 
ning of souls. Those older evangelists were 



The Minister as a Soul-Winner. 23 

both a braver and a wiser lot. They grappled 
directly with the worst of men. It was no indi- 
rect task with them. And they were the best in- 
structors in the ways of soul-winning; for one 
soul-winner in action is worth a thousand giv- 
ing advice. One doing it is worth a thousand 
not doing it at all, but telling how it can be done. 
One can not forget the methods of our fathers 
nor their faith. This was the true "faith of our 
fathers" which ought to be "living still." They 
would have scorned the easier methods. They 
went at the task directly and believed in God as 
they did so. We recall how Mr. Finney prayed 
for a certain large victory and closed his prayer 
with the words : "And Thou knowest, O Lord, 
I am not accustomed to be denied." When we 
take such tasks upon us, we are warranted in 
doing so with such faith as this. 

Now, at the end of this long address, let us 
recall the way over which we have come. Soul- 
winning is not an incident in a minister's life. 
It is not something tacked on to a ministry. It 
is its very heart. And it ought to be the heart 
of every kind of ministry. We asked ourselves 
certain searching questions, in the light of His 
presence. Were we ever soul-winners? Are we 
winners of souls now ? Why did we quit ? Why 



24 The Revival. 

have we never begun? What of the immediate 
future ? 

Not much has been said of methods. The 
motive must dominate the method. Have we the 
motive ? 

We reminded ourselves that our field is not 
far off nor vague. It is at hand. We are to 
individualize our efforts and our prayers. We 
have one chance. We have not had one before 
this. We shall not have one after this. "The 
night cometh." 

Finally, this is the largest thing we have to 
do. It is not a magic process touching part of 
life, awakening simply a new feeling or present- 
ing a person some new opinions or resolutions. 
It is a divine process, involving an abiding and 
radical change of affection, a change of the 
habits of thought, a transformation of life's mo- 
tives, the regeneration of will. It is the com- 
plete redemption of human life, so that in all 
things Christ may have the pre-eminence. To 
this task, in Christ's name, let us this day give 
ourselves. 



PERSONAL EVANGELISM. 

Edward B. Crawford. 

"Follow Me, and I will make you Ushers of men. 
— Matt, iv, 19. 

The; saving of men was the work to which 
Christ called the disciples. For this the Church 
was founded. It is our work. This is our job. 
Men are saved for service. The problem of 
saving the world is to find a saved man who is 
willing to go after an unsaved man. It is a 
question of Andrew bringing his brother. Sav- 
ing the masses is but a question of saving a man 
or woman. Christ is calling the Church to fol- 
low Him. A forward movement seems impera- 
tive. "Aggressive Evangelism" is in the air. 
The pulpit is aroused. Sermons are increasingly 
evangelistic. The pew is interested. "The Com- 
ing Revival" is the common theme. The feeling 
of expectancy grows. Glowing faces indicate 
that many have already had a vision. Our lead- 
ers are sounding a call to service. The atmos- 
25 



26 The Revival. 

phere is full of tonic. The grasp men are get- 
ting on their work would indicate iron in the 
blood. The outlook is full of encouragement. 
A better day dawns upon us. The spirit of 
evangelism is widespread. The results show that 
the dynamic force of Pentecost is still among 
us. "The God of hosts is with us." 

Success will depend upon two things, — 
method and spirit. There are methods many. 
We must not belittle them. The Gospel service 
Sunday evening, special revival services, the in- 
gathering through the Sunday-school, are all im- 
portant. It is not the object of this paper to 
compare one method with another, but to present 
the claims of one form of service too often over- 
looked. It is personal evangelism. This is the 
keynote of present-day evangelism. Personal 
work is entitled to consideration. It is a method 
our Lord used most effectively. The matchless 
example of Christ speaks loudly for personal 
evangelism. If one reads carefully the four Gos- 
pels he will find that this form of service stands 
cut with great prominence. Christ wanted the 
individual. Again and again He turned from 
the multitude to focus His attention upon some 
man or woman. His work was not limited to 
great occasions and large audiences. To pause 
and turn a man's face toward the great unseen 



Personal Evangelism. 27 

realities was the practice of His life. So with 
the apostles. Andrew led Peter to Christ. 
Philip brought Nathanael. When persecutions- 
scattered the disciples, "they went everywhere 
preaching the Word." This is the need of our 
times. Years ago the writer formed a life re- 
solve to do personal work. Not every man can 
be a great preacher to a great congregation, but 
every man can be the bearer of a message to an 
individual. He can talk with one face to face. 
A musket is a good thing. It scatters the shot, 
and there is a bare possibility of hitting some- 
thing. But if you would bring down an eagle, 
a rifle is better. In the Master's work, elimina- 
tion and focusing are often needed. There are 
times when we need to shut out the crowd and 
focus our attention upon an individual, if we 
would bring him to Jesus. 

We should engage in personal evangelism 
for three outstanding reasons : 

1. Because in this way we can reach the ^ 
people. Fishermen go where fish are. If we 
would be fishers of men, we must go where men 
are. In the parable of the "Lost Sheep" we 
learn that the best way to find a lost sheep is to 
go after it. Waiting for it to turn up is too un- 
certain. "How to reach the masses" is a ques- 
tion often discussed. As the writer has listened 



28 Ths Revival. 

to the discussion of this threadbare theme, he has 
been impressed that the question really discussed 
was not "How to reach the masses," but "How to 

* get the masses to the services of the Church ?" 
That is quite a different thing. Reaching the 
masses is not difficult. If one wants to reach 
people he can easily do it. He must go where 
the people are. In Christ's time the churches 
had empty pews, yet Christ wasted no time dis- 
cussing the question, "How to reach the masses," 
but went out into the country, and down by the 
seashore, and into the cities — wherever the peo- 
ple were. He visited the people where they were. 
So must we. If men will not come to the Church 
for the Gospel, then the Church must carry the 
Gospel to men where they are. Christ did not say 
to the world, "Go to the Church and get the Gos- 
pel." Instead, he said to the Church, "Go ye 
into all the world." A few months ago a careful 
count of the attendance at one hundred and 
twenty-five churches in this city was made. From 
these an estimate was made, and it was found 
that less than sixteen per cent of the adult popu- 
lation of our city was at church on that day. This 
should not discourage us, however. It should 
cause us to change our methods. We must carry 
the Gospel to the people. We must hunt up men. 

, We must visit home, store, shop, and office in 



Personal Evangelism. 29 

quest of men. If we really want the people, we 
shall find them swarming all about us. 

It is said that it is difficult to get people to 
special revival services. Therefore, we must 
have evangelists to draw the people. Our re- 
sponsibility is shifted to the shoulders of evangel- 
ists because they can draw the people. We must 
engage a great organizer, a gifted singer, and a 
noted evangelist, build a large tabernacle, secure 
the backing of a federation of Churches, spend 
vast sums in advertising, have large space in the 
newspaper, and do something spectacular, — 
what for? To reach the people. Now, if a 
Church really desires to reach the people, there 
is an easier way than that. The writer is not 
hostile to evangelists. We gladly give them full 
credit for their good work. What we do object 
to, is the shifting of the responsibility from 
where it belongs, on the heart of the Church, 
to some one else. We have known series of 
meetings to be held in which there was scarcely 
an unsaved person present, while all about the 
church there were many whose doors were ever 
open to any consecrated, friendly, sympathetic 
man or woman who desired to enter on a mis- 
sion of love with a message from the Master of 
Life. There is no surer way of reaching the 
people than by going after them. 



30 The: Revival. 

2. A second reason is: all can do it. The 
entire Church membership can be harnessed up. 
The preacher can not, and should not, do it all. 
He should be a leader. We need leaders. We 
are suffering through lack of them. Leadership 
is the need of our times. Finding work for all 
the members of the Church is a test of our abil- 
ity. This is not easy ; but it must be done. We 
must know what we want to do. We must have 
an outstanding purpose. It must be big enough 
to command the thought and strength of the 
Church. We are content with little things. We 
need a fresh vision of our work. We need to 
hug up closer to our job. The preacher must 
set the pace. The pulpit must be on fire. The 
pew is not insensible to fire. It knows a few 
things. If the pastor is a leader, there will be 
small trouble with the pew. The pew will fol- 
low the example of the preacher. The workers 
will be multiplied. "They went everywhere, 
preaching the Word." This is our need. The 
house-to-house canvass is the method used to- 
day by political workers. In this manner Chris- 
tian Science is propagated. This method is used 
by the Mormon missionaries. The followers of 
Dowie do the same. Why should we not use 
the same method ? Many a Church would double 



Personal Evangelism. 31 

its congregation, in addition to adding to its list 
of probationers, by this method. 

In the writer's parish the field is divided into 
districts, and a house-to-house visitation is made 
by members of the Church each year, to secure 
the names of non-church goers, and to invite 
them to the services of the Church. From time 
to time invitations are sent through the mails to 
these neighborhood people, and they are visited 
by both pastor and people. A kindly reception 
is the universal rule, and many have been led to 
attend the services of the Church in this way. 
One man said to the writer, "I have lived on this 
corner for five years, and you are the first man 
to invite me to Church in that time." This man 
was the son of a Methodist preacher, and a uni- 
versity graduate. Another said, "I have lived 
in Chicago for six years without darkening the 
door of a church." This man was also the son 
of a Methodist preacher. What we need is 
walking evangelists, who will go from house to 
house with loving words, to woo people away 
from sin, to the Lamb of God. Some may think 
this hard work, but it must be done if people are 
ever brought under the influence of Jesus Christ. 
It does take a kind of holy boldness to tackle a 
stranger ; but that is true even in selling goods. 
Book agents are accustomed to that, and it can 



32 The; Revival. 

be acquired. Let a Church settle it that it wants 
people, and let it be willing to pay the price, and 
it will not be difficult to reach them. Fishermen 

^ learn how to fish by fishing, and we may learn 
how to catch men. Many a Church, now lan- 
guishing and dead, might take on life and have 
marked success, by giving itself to personal 
evangelism. 

3. The third reason is: it is an effective 
method. God touches men through men. The 
pathway from God to a human heart is through 
a human heart. Reaching a man must often be 
through face-to-face pleading. There is power 
in personal appeal. It is the man-to-man work 
that tells. Influence is one soul touching another 

, soul. Aristotle defines friendship as one soul 
abiding in two bodies. An essay on friendship 
is a chapter of the heart. This work counts be- 
cause the heart is in it. It is not spectacular; 
gets no press notice ; wins but little applause from 
men, but it accomplishes great things for God. 
This method succeeds where others fail. Dr. 
Cuyler said of the three thousand souls he had 
won for Christ, "I have handled every stone." 
In time of war sharp-shooting counts. This is 
sharp-shooting. The seven hundred chosen men 
of Israel, who were left-handed, could sling a 
stone at a hair-breadth and not miss. These 



Personal Evangelism. 33 

were mightily effective. Preaching is generally 
to the audience ; personal work is direct and per- 
sonal. It is aimed at a man. There is no mis- 
taking who is meant; there is no possibility of 
shifting the message to some one else ; there is 
no escaping the arrow. One can hang on till he 
lands his man. Some will not come to church ; 
others can not come if they would ; but personal 
work reaches them all. Those who love souls can 
go anywhere looking for wanderers, and they 
can return with joy, bringing their sheaves with 
them. John Vassar called himself, "God's grey- 
hound after souls." We must not forget what 
John B. Gough said of the one loving word of 
Joel Stratton that won him : "My friend, it may 
be a small matter for you to speak the one word 
for Christ that wins a needy soul — a small mat- 
ter for you ; but it is everything to him." It is 
forgetting this truth that causes personal evan- 
gelism to be neglected. 

Meeting the wife of one of our Church mem- 
bers one day, the writer said to her, "Why have 
you not become a Christian and come into the 
Church?" Her reply was: "I suppose it is be- 
cause no cne has ever asked me." The following 
Sunday she united with the Church. It was as 
simple as that. Having gone through a storm 
one night in winter to talk with a young lady 
3 



34 The Revival. 

about her soul, she surrendered to Christ, and 
afterward said to a friend, "His coming through 
that storm impressed me so that I could not re- 
sist." A woman who had not attended a Church 
service for seven years, said, "I do not under- 
stand why you should be interested in me." Dur- 
ing an open-air meeting adjoining the church, 
a drunken man was seen passing on the side- 
walk; a young man asked him to come within 
the circle and enjoy the singing. At the close of 
the meeting on the lawn he came into the au- 
dience-room for the Sunday evening service, and 
at the close of the service came to the altar. His 
wife had left him because of his drunkenness 
and cruelty. The man was converted ; his wife 
returned to him, and she was converted; both 
united with the Church, and are now living to- 
gether. That man went out and brought a 
gambler to our services; a few nights later both 
the gambler and his wife were converted. They 
both united with our Church, and never miss a 
Sunday service. One morning in class-meeting 
a probationer said, "The pastor was after me for 
three months, and got both me and my wife." 
The fact is, the pastor had been after him for 
a year, but it took nine months to make an im- 
pression. It is a joy to relate that in the writer's 
own Church there have been two hundred con- 



Personal Evangelism. 35 

versions in the past six months, and one hundred 
and thirty additions to the Church. Personal 
evangelism in large measure is responsible for 
this. 

Yet we need more than method. It is im- 
portant, but spirit is important also. Much will 
depend upon the spirit in which our work is 
done. People will not only measure what we 
say, they will measure us also. When one speaks, 
you not only want to know what he says, but, 
what is more important, you want to know who 
he is and what he is. When some people speak, 
you listen, not because their words are profound, 
but because they are profound ; not because their 
words are tall, but because they are tall. When 
we speak, people will measure our words, not by 
their size, but by our size. What we are is im- 
portant. We must put character back of our 
work. Our spirit will count for large things 
when we talk with men face to face about God, 
and sin, and destiny. A man was once taken 
sick, and thought he was dying. To the min- 
ister who asked if he might pray with him, he 
said, "You can pray if you want to." As the 
minister knelt to pray the man watched him, 
thinking nothing about his soul, but thinking 
about the preacher. He wanted to learn if he 
was real. As he watched he saw a tear stealing 



36 The: Revival. 

down the preacher's face, and he thought, "This 
man is real; he loves me, though I am nothing 
to him." That broke his heart, and he gave him- 
self to God. He recovered, and became an ac- 
tive worker for Christ. 

If we would lead others to Christ, we must 
know Him ourselves. We must have a real ex- 
perience. We can not preach surrender to others 
if we have not surrendered. We can not call men 
out of sin unless we have broken with sin. We 
can not lead men to the Cross of Calvary unless 
we have been there. What we need is Christ. 
"Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." 
We must have Him on the throne of our lives. 
He must sway the scepter. In this work we 
must be led by the Master of men. We must 
have personal communion with Him, and catch a 
vision of Calvary and Easter and Glory, and 
have a personal anointing from the skies. What 
we need is a living Christ; a present Christ; a 
mighty Christ; an indwelling Christ, — and vic- 
tory is assured. 

Christ said, "It is expedient for you that I 
go away." It seemed like a calamity. It would 
have been fatal; but one never-to-be-forgotten 
night Christ drew the disciples very close to 
Him, and said, "I will send the Comforter." He 
went away that He might be forever near. 



Personal Evangelism. 37 

Christ had been with His disciples ; henceforth 
the Spirit is to be in them. The difference is 
vital, and torches the very genius of the Chris- 
tian religion. Christ had been everything to 
the disciples; yet He says, "It is expedient for 
you that I go away." The disciples look out 
upon a hard and cold world. Can they hope to 
make an impression upon their age? They are 
not sufficient for their tasks. They have not 
strength for their burdens. Their leader is leav- 
ing, and they can not follow. They must re- 
main, and labor and struggle, suffer and die. 
The stars have gone out of the sky. It is dark. 
But the promise was, "I will come to you." That 
is the promise God makes to all men. What we 
need is God. Pentecost means to have God 
everywhere. The Master said, "Tarry." Strange 
word! Did He not know the world was dying, 
and hearts were breaking, and multitudes were 
marching to the grave? Yes; He knew it all, 
but He also knew it would be useless to go forth 
to God's work without God's equipment. We 
must have Divine equipment, else we shall be 
swept from the battlefield. The strength of ten 
will not do; we must have something of the 
strength of God. Was that promise kept? It 
was. At Pentecost something happened. Some- 
body came. A change is wrought. Fire and 



38 The Revival. 

power are here. Fire changes. It purifies, im- 
passions, and transforms. This Pentecostal fire 
makes possible a clean heart. It gives one an 
enthusiasm for the service of God. It is the 
secret of a passion for souls. The sign of Chris- 
tianity is a tongue of fire. It also transforms. 
The disciple who lied will never lie again. He 
who blackened his lips will never swear again. 
He who was weak as water is now like the gran- 
ite rock. He who hung his head in the presence 
of a serving-maid can now stand in the presence 
of the ecclesiastical representatives of the Jewish 
i ace, and square his shoulders like a great rock 
breasting the yeasty sea, and charge them with 
the death of his Lord. Now his rugged man- 
hood shows above their bigotry as a mountain 
rising out of the hills. Pentecostal power clothed 
him with might, even as the mists hang about the 
tall cliffs of the sea, and Peter stands in history, 
clear and bold, like one sculptured against the 
sky. 

This is our need, Pentecost is here. This 
power is for us all. What we need is God. The 
greatest need of the Church is more of God. 
We need to get alone with Him. If the pulpit 
is to be a live wire, the preacher must, like Enoch 
of old, "walk with God." The explanation of 
our empty pews is, there is not enough of God 



u 



Personal Evangelism. 39 

in the Church. Get pulpit and pew on fire with 
the Holy Ghost, and let preacher and people go 
out into non-Christian homes in the community, 
tc do personal work, and the half-empty churches 
will fill up, and we shall not need to advertise 
sensational themes to draw the crowds. O that 
we might have more of God in the Church ! Let 
cur prayer be, — 

" Breathe on me, Breath of God ; 
Fill me with life anew, 
That I may love what Thou dost love, 
And do what Thou dost do. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Until my heart is pure, 
Until with Thee I will one will, 

To do and to endure. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God ; 

Blend all my soul with Thine, 
Until this earthly part of me 

Glows with Thy fire divine." 



THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL IN HIS- 
TORY. 

Charles J. Litter D. D., LL. D. 

The Religious Revival in History is no mean 
topic ; on the contrary, it is one of great magni- 
tude and complexity, and two serious difficulties 
confront us at the beginning: (i) The narrow 
conception of the religious revival generally 
prevalent; and (2) a very shallow objection to 
its recurrence. The narrow conception attrib- 
utes the revival to some conspicuous promoter, 
whose advent is trumpeted beforehand, and who 
is expert in all the devices by which religious ex- 
citement may be kindled and fanned to a flame. 
Such a promoter is termed a revivalist, and his 
meetings are called a revival. 

The shallow objection to recurring revivals is 
implied in the frequent declaration that the 
Church should enjoy a continuous revival, which 
is about as sensible as to say that the farmer 
should always have in every field a heavy crop. 
40 



The Religious Revival. 41 

It is an objection that originates in sheer ig- 
norance of the conditions that limit and hinder 
every form of social effort. 

The religious revival (that is the first thing 
to note) is one species of a large family. There 
have been revivals of law, of political liberty, of 
social righteousness, of literature, of science, of 
art, as there have been revivals of religion. The 
term renaissance, for instance, is familiar 
enough ; it designates the new birth of the class- 
ical spirit, the return to the noblest achievements 
of the ancient civilization, which quickened every 
form of intellectual activity, first in Italy and 
afterwards in Western Europe, just before the 
Reformation. The term Revolution is equally 
familiar; and not a few historians are using it 
to describe religious movements of far-reaching 
power. But we must remember that the inform- 
ing spirit of every great revolution is a revival, a 
resurrected spirit ; it is the return of the original 
creative energy to reclaim and to perfect its early 
achievements. Thus the men of the Netherlands 
fought for their ancient charters, Pym and Eliot 
and Hampden for the guarantees of Magna 
Charta and the rights of representatives ; even 
the French Revolution started with the cry for 
the vanished States-General. And it looks as 
though our liberties might some day perish un- 



42 The; Revival. 

less our souls shall be replenished with the spirit 
that obtained and established them. 

Revivals, then — political, intellectual, relig- 
ious — are returns of the informing spirit of 
human progress; this spirit wanes in politics, in 
science, in art, in morals, in religion. If it be 
not revived, progress is arrested ; if it be not re- 
plenished, the attainments of the past are lost, 
corrupted, perverted. 

The reason for this is obvious : The upward 
movements of mankind start with a few; "every 
great truth begins with a minority of one." The 
originators of great moral enterprises have the 
world against them; they must risk their pos- 
sessions and their happiness ; they must suffer 
and, for the most part, perish in the inevitable 
conflict. When, though, the movement triumphs, 
especially when it gets itself incorporated, like 
Christianity in some mighty organization, then it 
becomes popular, commanding, enticing. This is 
the period described by Jesus ; and the men that 
stone the seers of their own generation build the 
monuments of the prophets that their fathers 
slew. For in this period selfish and ambitious and 
mercenary men capture and control the institu- 
tions created at so great a cost, and in controll- 
ing them for their own ends, corrupt and per- 
vert them. 



The Religious Revival. 43 

This is true of democratic institutions ; it is 
true of the law of which Hooker wrote that "her 
seat is the bosom of God, and her voice the har- 
mony of the world ;" it is true even of science, 
and mournfully true of religion. In a word, such 
are the conditions that surround all noble en- 
deavor, that there never has been anywhere or 
at any time on the earth unimpeded, uninter- 
rupted human progress. 

Over against this mournful generalization 
history permits us to set a more consoling one. 
There are sublime moments, moments of revival 
and replenishment, when the arrested progress 
receives fresh impulse. They occurred of old, 
and they are occurring now. The cry of the 
prophet, "O Lord, revive Thy work ; in the midst 
of the years make known," comes to us from 
afar; the joy of the Lord breaks across the At- 
lantic from the Welsh coast ; and in Italy a noble 
company of scholars and thinkers are rallying 
with one accord around the incorporeal but lu- 
minous form of Dante. 

Spiritual energy has its floods and its ebbs. 
Its apparent triumphs are often deceptive and 
dangerous. After David comes Solomon, and 
then Jezebel and the priests of Baal. But there 
was always in Israel the remnant; and there was 
more. There were recurring infusions of new 



44 The Revival. 

life. The waning spiritual energy was recruited, 
ennobled, illuminated, electrified; and as in the 
commonwealth of Israel, so it has been in the 
Church of Christ. There have been dissensions 
. and persecutions ; epochs of gloom and barbar- 
ism, of Moslem hatred and practical atheism, 
of corruption and debility and hypocrisy; but 
there have been self-sacrifice and heroism and 
spiritual beauty. The lost has been recovered; 
old and new truths have been applied to bad 
conditions ; and the creative principles of Chris- 
tianity, Faith and Hope and Love, have been 
restored to their throne. 

Majestic, indeed, is the philosophy of history 
contained in the letter to the Hebrews : "These 
all, though witness was borne to them through 
faith, received not the promise, God having pro- 
vided some better thing concerning us, that apart 
from us they should not be made perfect." For 
here we strike the paradox of religious history. 
Periods of waning faith are also periods of re- 
newed spiritual energy; Caesar and Christ ap- 
pear in the same century ; Christianity rises amid 
the ruins of old beliefs, and outlives the empire 
that sought its destruction; Gregory the Great 
sends missionaries to England, while Mahomet is 
preparing for the mastery of Arabia; Alexander 
VI and Savonarola, Leo X and Luther, Voltaire 



The Religious Revival. 45 

and Wesley, confront each other in the same 
epochs, and by their interaction alter the shape 
of the world. 

History teaches us that for such epoch-mak- 
ing periods there is both Divine and human 
preparation, — a preparation of agents and a 
preparation of conditions. God gives to the 
world men and women; God controls the condi- 
tions of the age in which they are to appear, 
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Miriam, Isaiah, the 
M.accabees, John, Paul, Augustine, Bernard, 
Eerthold, Eckhart, Luther, Wesley, Livingstone, 
— these have been raised up and prepared divinely 
for their work. But let there be no mistake 
here. Many are called and few chosen. Balaam 
contrasts strangely with Moses ; the young man 
whom Jesus loved with Saul of Tarsus, who was 
not disobedient to the heavenly vision; Abelard 
might have done a work far nobler than that of 
Bernard. God enriches every period with poten- 
tialities ; there never has been a period that lacked 
the energy and the intelligence to save it. God 
is always doing His part. But even a Moses 
must choose ; and so must an Isaiah and a Saul ; 
and so must a Baxter and a Wesley. And the 
past would have been beyond all calculation 
glorious if the men and women who were called 
had been obedient to the vision. We write the 



46 The: Revival,. 

records of those that answered ; only God keeps 
the record of the poets who might have sung and 
the prophets who might have spoken. 

Then, again, God controls conditions. The 
manner in which the part of the world that is be- 
yond human control decides great issues holds 
the historian in awe. "This universal frame" 
takes sides in every conflict. God in His man- 
agement of this universal frame — the great Mar- 
shal of Events, as Bacon termed Him — has His 
strong east wind ready wherever He finds a 
Moses who can stretch his hand across the sea. 
I know that this leads directly to the conclusion 
that God is always on the giving hand, that the 
Divine preparation is always complete; and as I 
read the Scriptures, that conclusion is inevitable. 

It is the human preparation which is never 
adequate, which never has been adequate in any 
time or in any clime. "Ye stiff-necked and un- 
circumcised in heart and ears, ye do always re- 
sist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do 
3 r e." These are the appalling words with which 
Stephen smites the leaders of Israel. "Art thou 
a ruler of the Jews and knowest not these 
things?" is the piercing and pathetic question of 
Jesus to Nicodemus. Israel is never ready ; a 
Simeon, an aged Anna, a few like them, are wait- 
ing for the consolation and listening for the voice 



The Religious Revival. 47 

of Jehovah ; but the sublimest expectations that 
have ever hovered over a people have been de- 
graded, not once only, but often, to dreams of 
secular wealth and temporal splendor like the 
Messianic vision in the Jewish mind. And so in 
every revival that history records the human 
preparation has been inadequate, defective, piti- 
fully meager. And this is true, whether we study 
the preparation of agents or the management of 
conditions. Every great revival in history is 
marked by some instances of absolute devotion; 
there is, indeed, a glorious army of martyrs and 
a goodly company of prophets, and martyrs and 
prophets have been nurtured by mothers like 
Anthusa and Monica and Susannah Wesley ; but 
aside from this remnant of the permanently pray- 
erful, what shall we say about the preparation of 
agents for the miracles of a great revival ? 

What shall we say? Say again that the 
human preparation is never adequate! There 
must be an abandon to the work of God com- 
mensurate with the glory of the prize. Without 
this self-abandoning faith, the miracles, as Jesus 
said, the mighty works are impossible. The evil 
spirits of a turbulent epoch yield to fasting and 
tc prayer only. Not to fasting and prayer of the 
routine sort, but to that obedience even unto the 
death of the cross of which Jesus is at once ex- 



48 The Revival. 

ample and inspiration. We are frequently un- 
just to the men of other days and other surround- 
ings. We detect and disclose their aberrations, but 
we fail to appreciate the sublimity of their devo- 
tion to their own ideals. What a man was Ber- 
nard of Clairvaux! What a spirit was Anselm 
of Canterbury ! What forms are those of Francis 
of Assisi and Catharine of Siena ! Their ideals 
were indeed imperfect, but their devotion was ab- 
solute. And what avails the nobler ideal to a 
nerveless and unheroic generation ? When I pic- 
ture to myself the flagellants of the fourteenth 
century, whole populations driven by a fury of 
repentance, it seems to me as though they must 
rise up in judgment against this enlightened and 
indifferent generation. There are worse things 
than emotional excess. Moral stupor is worse; 
so is the seared conscience, and the petrified 
heart; so is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
the eyes, and the pride of life ! 

Nevertheless, the historian deplores the Chris- 
tian environment in which the spiritual heroes of 
the Middle Ages were compelled to labor and lay 
waste their powers. The revivals that they at- 
tempted perished speedily. The Cluniac revival 
was swallowed up in the struggle of the papacy 
and the empire; Bernard turned aside from his 
real calling to further the Crusades and to crush 



The: Rexigious Revival. 49 

Abelard ; Arnold, of Brescia, was swept into 
politics; Francis and Catherine had noble suc- 
cessors, but they were too few for their sur- 
roundings ; the penance preachers that followed 
them in Italy failed of permanent results; 
Wiclif's spiritual influence was thwarted by so- 
cial uprisings ; the teachings of Huss and Jerome 
were drowned out by the drums of war. His- 
tory shows us these revivals that failed ; it shows 
us also revivals poisoned by ethical weakness, 
like the great awakening started by Abelard ; and 
revivals driven to disastrous reaction, like that of 
Northampton, which ended in the exile of Jona- 
than Edwards from the people who in the periods 
of terror had quailed before him. It shows us 
revivals, like those of the Reformation, ensan- 
guined by bitter controversy, and even the nobler 
English revival of the eighteenth century stained 
and impeded by fruitless quarrel, willful extrava- 
gance of speech, and frequent misbehavior. 

Now it has been urged quite frequently that 
conditions are beyond the control of spiritual 
leaders. To which the reply is obvious. They 
have recognized always, though sometimes dimly, 
that they must Control the forces that confront 
them or be conquered by them. Bernard, for in- 
stance, recognized too late his fatal blunder in 
preaching up the Crusades; and Savonarola the 



50 The Revival. 

direful error of his political entanglements. The 
preacher of righteousness must beware of popu- 
lar excitements that divert him from his calling, 
and never are these more dangerous than when 
the cry ascends Vox Populi, Vox Dei. On the 
other hand, he must not face his age with 
blanched face and trembling hands. In critical 
moments (and they are numerous) this is the 
question : Are God's servants equal to their op- 
portunity? For moments of peril are always 
moments of opportunity. Then it is that the 
mountains are alive with the unseen host. Periods 
of inquiry, of intellectual audacity, of commercial 
and political development, are periods not to be 
dreaded, but to be welcomed. Goliath has no ter- 
rors for David; and sloth is never the herald of 
God. The Renaissance gave to England a Colet, 
to Switzerland a Zwingli, to Germany a Melanch- 
thon ; it stirred to life the universities of Europe. 
The discoveries of great ocean highways shifted 
the center of political gravity to the Protestant 
world. Nothing is absurder, and, suffer me to 
add, nothing betrays a feebler faith in God, than 
perpetually moaning over the conditions in which 
we have been placed. We are placed here to 
vanquish them. Like the Master Himself, His 
disciples are here, not to condemn the world, 
but to enlighten and to transform it. Whether 



The Religious Revival. 51 

the problem has been a local or a general one, 
the really wise leader, like a skillful engineer, 
has subordinated material and surroundings to 
his purpose. And this, too, in things both small 
and great. Berthold, of Ratisbon, did not dis- 
dain to determine the direction of the wind by 
means of a feather, and to place his hearers ac- 
cordingly. Here was a sensible man studying 
minutely the least of local conditions. Wiclif and 
Tyndale gave England a vernacular Bible ; this 
was dealing with the larger problem. Charles 
Wesley gave England and the world new hymns ; 
so, too, did John. But John did more : he studied 
to improve the physical and mental conditions of 
the English people. In Bunyan's pithy prologue, 
the glorious tinker defends the method of his 
teaching with charming humor and wisdom. And 
history has no word of Comfort for idolaters of 
ancient machinery. Writ large over every page 
of the history of Christianity are the words of 
Jesus, "The children of this world are wiser in 
their generation than the children of light." 

Wesley's iron rule finds vindication in this 
truth, that conditions may be, to some extent, 
controlled by an organizing mind and a resolute 
will. He deplored his early departures from his 
ruling ideal. He withdrew from controversy 
that he might shape the materials that came to 



52 The; Revival. 

his hand with loving intelligence and courage. 
He did not try to shape them by pious chatter, 
oral or printed. He studied them, he directed 
them, he shaped them patiently into instruments 
of righteousness. And this is true of many of 
his disciples; it was conspicuously true of Hugh 
Price Hughes. 

History reveals, furthermore, that revivals 
have originated in deepened ethical convictions, 
and are valuable only if they have resulted in 
diviner conduct and sublimer standards of mo- 
rality. The Old Testament teaching has for its 
corner-stone the Ten Commandments, the New 
Testament, the Sermon on the Mount. Deep 
calls to deep. Sinai and Calvary mean the same 
thing, — God's love of righteousness, His hatred 
of iniquity, His immeasurable and enduring 
mercy. The prophets reiterate the Decalogue and 
apply its principles to the social conditions that 
they behold. Paul resents no charge so fiercely 
as the slander that he teaches "men to do evil 
that good may come." The history of revivals 
is the history of a recoil from ceremonial and 
routine religion to ethical purity and the right- 
eousness of faith. The tithing of mint and anise 
and cummin makes way for the new command- 
ment of love. The sins that ruin homes and 
break women's hearts and darken children's lives, 



The: Religious Revival. 53 

that turn workshops into the outer courts of 
hell, and the pleasures of the poor into the poison 
of their lives; the indifference of the rich man 
to Lazarus ; the callous-heartedness of priest and 
Levite on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem; 
the unpunished crimes of the respectable, and the 
rotting consciences of the whited human sep- 
ulcher, — these are the sins over which the great 
revival preacher mourns. Mourns, I say ; for 
he never gloats over sin, and never makes merry 
over iniquity. "I preached from the text, 'The 
wicked shall be turned into hell/ " said a young 
man flippantly to McCheyne. "Did you do it 
with tenderness?" asked that seraphic spirit, fix- 
ing upon him a gaze of indescribable rebuke. 
Take the history of the Church from the days 
of Abraham until now; it has pith and power 
only as the prophets and apostles stand for right- 
eousness. And that not a conventional righteous- 
ness or an ecclesiastical righteousness, but holi- 
ness, wholeness of being, an entire sanctification, 
a moral earnestness and an inward purity mani- 
fest in word and deed, in abundance and variety 
of fine performance, in fullness of life rather 
than mere correctness of behavior. 

Each age has its favorite iniquities, adding to 
the older and vulgar forms of sin — new, subtler, 
wickeder ones, often disguised in garments of 



54 Ths Revival. 

light. This is especially true of social crimes, 
which the priest and the preacher too willingly 
condone. The great Italian preachers of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were ministers 
of reconciliation, quenching fratricidal fires, 
when family rose against family, and citizen 
against citizen. Wonderful indeed were many 
of their triumphs. France in the days of Pascal 
w 7 as infected with hypocrisy. Alas for Port 
Royal ! Alas for the French people ! The genius 
of the noble youth was recognized and ap- 
plauded, but there was not faith enough for an 
ethical miracle. And the rivers of France, the 
Seine and the Loire, red with the blood of the 
Revolution, were the appalling consequence. 

There are, I know, many that scout the propo- 
sition I have stated. But wince and flinch as they 
may, none has ampler historical support. On the 
one hand, every revival of consequence has orig- 
inated in a reaction against unrighteousness ; and, 
on the other hand, every revival that has lowered 
its ethical demands has ended in spiritual de- 
bility. Careless writers of history are responsi- 
ble for the opposite opinion. Thus in a recent 
work upon revivals I find much quoted from 
Jonathan Edwards, but not a word of the first 
paragraph of his "Narrative." Let me supply 
the void : 



The Religious Revival. 55 

"After a more than ordinary licentiousness in 
the people here, a concern for religion began to 
revive in the year 1729; but more obviously in 
1733, when there was a general reformation of 
outward disorders, which has continued ever 
since." 

Our own General Rules are an enduring 
monument of the ethical power of early Meth- 
odism. Luther's Theses were a flaming protest 
against the flagrant immorality that the Church 
was encouraging; Savonarola and Wiclif were 
preachers of righteousness; and the present re- 
vival in Wales is marked by the same enthusiasm 
for purity and goodness ; and when Jonathan Ed- 
wards departed from his earlier preaching of out- 
ward and inward holiness to the preaching of a 
harsh and terrible theology, he hastened the hour 
which he described in these gloomy words : 

"It began to be very sensible that the Spirit 
of God was gradually withdrawing from us, and 
after this time Satan seemed to be more let loose, 
and raged in a dreadful manner. Instances of 
conversion were rare in comparison of what they 
had been, and the Spirit of God appeared sensibly 
withdrawing from all parts of the country." 

The emotional excitement that accompanies 
a great revival may easily be mistaken for the 
Spirit of God that transforms the soul; the his- 



56 The Revival. 

torian knows better. To him it is only a con- 
comitant, sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful; 
and it requires no very sharp vision to detect the 
inevitable reaction whenever the will to be good 
is swallowed up in the desire for ecstasy. 

Wesley, therefore, organized the conscience 
and the rapture ; he insisted strenuously upon the 
rules of his societies; he led an ethical uprising 
against every form of wickedness; he demanded 
a return to primitive Christianity and to Scrip- 
tural holiness. 

And in our own day the New York Times bore 
this striking testimony to the work of Mr. Moody 
in Manhattan Island : "The drunken have be- 
come sober, the vicious virtuous, the worldly and 
self-seeking unselfish, the ignoble noble, the im- 
pure pure, the youth have started with generous 
aims, the old have been stirred from grossness." 

Whatever have been the theological and meta- 
physical theories of great revival preachers, they 
have in practice appealed to men's consciences, 
to their sense of responsibility for their conduct 
and their characters, and they have assailed the 
will with every motive that seemed to them ef- 
fective. This was as true of Edwards at first, 
and of Whitefield, of Finney, and of Spurgeon, 
of Chalmers, and of Dwight, as it was true of 
Peter Cartwright and of Hugh Price Hughes. 



The Religious Revival. 57 

For this reason no revival has amounted to much 
that was not a work among and for the poor. It 
was like Jesus Christ to lift into eternal promi- 
nence this note of his Messiahship, — "The poor 
have glad tidings told them." The poor man's, 
claim for justice and equity and brotherly kind- 
ness is the ethical problem of the ages. It was 
in Egypt in the days of Moses, it was in Israel 
in the time of the prophets, it was in Judea in 
the days of Jesus, it was in England in the time 
of Wiclif, it was in Germany in the days of 
Luther, it is to-day the wide world over. Note, 
however, that I say both among and for the 
poor. I listen frequently to appeals that stir me 
to inward protest. They are appeals to the rich 
to work among the poor, that they may save 
their own skins and the skins of their children; 
as the euphemism goes, to save our institutions 
and our civilization. Jesus came not to save 
civilization, but to seek and to save the lost. He 
loved them. Any work among the poor must be 
for the poor. It must recognize their equality 
and dignity before God, and any salvation offered 
them must be deliverance and power and joy for 
themselves. Wesley's outspoken preference for 
them, and his untiring efforts to ennoble them, 
have been amply justified. He brought life and 
immortality to light in many a peasant's cottage 



58 The: Revival. 

and many a miner's hut. Boys and girls that 
would have been lost to themselves and to the 
world were rescued and ennobled by the conver- 
sion of their parents ; and if England and Amer- 
ica have been enriched by them, this is but one 
of many splendid consequences of the great re- 
vival. Wesley cared for them, as Wiclif had cared 
for the poor of England centuries before him, 
and as Jesus cared for the poor to whom He 
brought light, and love, and life. 

Finally, the great revivals pass beyond these 
ethical convictions and aspirations, necessary as 
they are, into the realm of spiritual life, into the 
kingdom of regeneration, the only sure region 
of permanent morality and ethical energy. 

Consider the case from both sides. Take, first, 
the revivals that failed. Take the Cluniac revival 
of the eleventh century, or take the four great 
teachers of the twelfth, Abelard, Arnold of Bres- 
cia, Anselm, and Bernard. They contributed to 
theology, they affected profoundly the ecclesias- 
tical systems and the political development of 
their age; and, to do them justice, three of the 
four were moral giants. But they could not 
preach a simple gospel, the grace that redeems 
and the grace that transforms. Or take the pen- 
ance preachers of Italy, that wonderful line of 
which Savonarola was last and chief. Why did 



The Religious Revival. 59 

they fail ? Their temporary triumphs were amaz- 
ing, and their figures grow more imposing as 
they recede. But Italy relapsed into the old 
habits ; the disciples of Savonarola were not new 
creatures in Christ Jesus, neither were those of 
the earlier preachers ; they lacked that mysterious 
permanent energy, that eternal life without which 
the loftiest ethics, even the ethics of Jesus Christ, 
are glittering, albeit celestial generalities. 

Look now at the other side — the revivals that 
succeeded. So far as the Reformation trans- 
formed the soul, so far, and no farther, did it 
purify and ennoble the two succeeding centuries. 
The ethical problems that it provoked were start- 
ling and far-reaching ; many of them remain un- 
solved. But the spiritual problem was paramount, 
and as the reformers suffered it to recede, their 
moral energy oozed away. Nothing is more 
pitiful than the attempts to maintain by civil and 
ecclesiastical machinery a character of righteous- 
ness which can only come by living faith. 

Over the ashes of Frances Willard they have 
inscribed upon marble, "How beautiful to be^- 
with God I" There is the history and the eternal 
expectation of all the saints from Enoch until 
now. It is beautiful to be with God. It is life, 
and joy, and peace, and strength. It is eternal 
life to know Him, and to follow on to know Him, 



6o The: Revival. 

to see Him as He is ; to be transformed into the 
same image from glory to glory, while we are re- 
flecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. 
Hence they have seen the most fruit of their 
labors to whom the Scriptures are veritable reve- 
lation, to whom the Scriptures reveal God — His 
being, His purposes, His love as shown in His 
ielations to those who spoke as they were moved 
by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is power to those 
who derive from its pages the reality and splendor 
of religious experience, not to those who mix its 
precious truth with alloy from their own specula- 
tions, shaping it into cunning catechisms ; not to 
those who have reduced it to a schedule of diffi- 
cult propositions; not to those for whom it is a 
matted skein of intertangled problems. No! as 
the Lord Jehovah liveth. "The secret of the 
Lord is with them that fear Him." 

Scriptural Christianity in the full and glo- 
rious sense of the term has never yet been seen on 
any large scale. We have, indeed, in the Bible 
men and women illustrating the precepts and 
the indwelling of God ; we have had also in every 
age since then those who have reflected, now 
dimly, now clearly, this same splendor ; but these 
all died without the perfect vision. The records 
of their faith have been kept, not for their sakes, 
but for our sake also; for unto us shall our faith 



The: Religious Revival. 6i 

be reckoned as righteousness, if we believe on 
Him that raised our Lord Jesus from the dead. 
To preach good news, to set forth Jesus Christ, 
the wisdom of God, the power of God, plenteous 
in mercy and the fountain of unfailing life, — 
this, as I read history, has been the secret of 
every religious uplift. I know that a different 
notion prevails, that great revivals are ascribed 
commonly to the influence of fear. The records 
do not prove it. Like Paul, the great preachers 
have been keenly alive to the wrath of God re- 
vealed from heaven against all unrighteousness 
of men; like him, they have pointed to death 
as the wages of sin, to the havoc wrought in the 
soul and in the world by disobedience and neg- 
lect of God ; but their most effective appeals have 
been to the conscience, to the craving for deliv- 
erance from the spirit of bondage and of fear, 
to the irrepressible longing of the human soul for 
the fullness of life. Nothing is more remarkable 
in the effective preacher, certainly nothing is 
more noteworthy in the preaching of Jesus, than 
the proportioning of the elements. No element 
is overlooked ; no element occupies too large a 
space or undue prominence; and salvation is al- 
ways the central theme. Every departure from 
the method of Jesus and John and Paul has been 
fraught with mischief. The magnificent out- 



62 The Revival. 

bursts of Romans, the glowing splendors of 
John's epistles, the amazing doxology with which 
Feter greets the sojourners of the dispersion, 
thrill us with a sense of the joy unspeakable and 
full of glory which was the wonder of the pagan 
world. The New Testament holds the world still 
because it offers rest, and peace, and strength, 
and joy; because it offers light, and love, and 
life in rich abundance ; because it establishes the 
law of God by faith in Jesus Christ, and kindles 
an unquenchable hope that is fed perpetually by 
the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, 
Father. 

There must be, there surely must be, as Wes- 
ley insisted and as so many before him believed, 
an attainable Christian perfection; a perfection 
to which repentance and pardon are only gate- 
ways ; a perfection that purifies the Church and 
enlarges its activities, that ennobles the State, 
making it the organ of justice and the strong- 
hold of the poor ; a perfection that is the salt of 
the earth and the light of the world. This per- 
fection will be manifest in hearts that love and 
hands that help ; in minds that think out blessings 
and joys for the children of sorrow and of pov- 
erty ; and in resolute wills that no obstacles daunt 
and no defeats discourage. The profession of it 
will be neither here nor there ; for it will not add 



The: Religious Revival,. 63 

to its power nor detract from its beauty, seeing 
that the tree is known by its fruit and not by the 
rustle of its leaves. The history of religious as- 
piration, of this struggle for perfection, is at once 
thrilling and saddening. It thrills one to behold 
the effort; it saddens one to see so much of 
thwarted endeavor. 

O God, how long shall the ages wait? When 
shall the true Shekinah appear, a humaiiity trans- 
figured by the indwelling Light of the World? 
When shall the temple of living stones be finished 
in which alone the living God can be reflected and 
adored? That is the miracle to convince the 
modern world. 



THE HUMAN AND DIVINE ELEMENTS 
IN A REVIVAL. 

J. H. MacDonaux 

As A Christian Church we are bound to dis- 
cover all we can about revival work. The work 
of redemption is the colossal work of the ages. 
If, as one has said, "true statesmanship is the 
art of changing a nation from what it is into 
what it ought to be," then the wise Christian min- 
ister is your real statesman. Compared with his 
work the adjustment of tariffs and the building 
of navies seem petty. His work is world-wide. 
All nations come into his thought. The eternal 
establishment of righteousness is his aim. How- 
ever visionary he may seem to the so-called prac- 
tical man, the kingdom of righteousness is more 
than a dream — it is a reality. Certainly he does 
not expect to accomplish his purpose by pettifog- 
ging intrigue or masterful diplomacy. He be- 
lieves in God. God is the ground of his hope. 

If in the economy of redemption the revival 
has a place, then we must do all we can to make 
64 



The Religious Revival, 65 

it efficient. If it has not, then the sooner we dis- 
cover that, the better. Nothing is to be gained 
by cherishing illusions. The law of decay is one 
of the most salutary and beneficent in the Divine 
order. All progress is based upon it. Trying to 
keep alive what should and must die is an un- 
profitable waste of effort. But in arriving at 
our conclusion we ought to be careful not to 
charge up to revivals what properly should be 
charged to the unwisdom of those who promote 
them. 

Personally, I think the revival will continue 
with us. We have simply gone astray. Wrong 
Conceptions of both God's relation and man's 
relation to the revival have raised false standards 
of faith and action and have threatened, for the 
time, to imperil the prosperity of the Master's 
kingdom. We need to find our bearings. 

The true revival depends upon the harmo- 
nious blending of two factors, one of which is 
constant and dependable, while the other is spas- 
modic, fitful, capricious. Our great business is 
to co-ordinate these factors ; therefore, we must 
from the first put the responsibility for a revival 
where it properly belongs. God can be no more 
arbitrary with revival work than with any other 
thing. God must be doing now, and always, all 
even He can do to redeem the world. Other- 



66 Ths Revival. 

wise He would not be God. He is constant. In 
Him there "is no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning." Then, why are not revivals continu- 
ous ? Perhaps I can best answer this by adapting 
a borrowed illustration. To-night a Marconi 
message will be sent from England across the 
sea. A hundred vessels will be cutting the water 
over which that message will travel. Why is it 
read by only one? Because but one vessel of 
the hundred has an instrument keyed to the pitch 
to receive it. The message fairly floods the 
path of its journey, but registers itself only at 
points keyed to the right pitch. God floods the 
world with effort and impulse, but He has to do 
with instruments which get woefully out of pitch. 
While Jesus stepped aside to pray, the apostles 
fell asleep. They were human; the demands of 
the flesh were upon them; their power of re- 
sistance was overcome; and during one of the 
most critical moments of history, when human 
salvation was in the balance, the closest friends 
of Jesus slept. Surely the flesh is weak, and with 
weakened flesh come flagging spirits. Revivals 
are not continuous simply because the man fac- 
tor in the work of salvation is ever doubtful. Let 
this factor be properly related to the Divine, and 
then everything that can be done will be done for 
the world's redemption. 



Elements in a Revival. 67 

Nor does the peculiar shade of theological 
belief seem to enter into the question to any ap- 
preciable degree. Theology seems important to 
us. That is because we ourselves have made it. 
It is the work of our own heads — I might al- 
most say the work of our own hands ; for we can 
hardly conceive how any head ever had to do 
with much of it. The Church of Jesus has won 
with all grades of culture and all shades of 
theological belief. The Wesleys and Whitefield 
could not work together because of differing 
theologies, but each could win mighty victories 
for God's kingdom. The successful Dr. Finney 
was eminently successful while earnestly sup- 
porting the New-School Presbyterianism. Others 
of his day were almost equally successful though 
roundly denouncing his views. Edwards stirred 
all New England with what theologians now term 
a wooden theology. Moody was not a scholar, 
and had for his theology only what is contained in 
John iii, 16. But Drummond was a man of re- 
finement and culture, accepting the modern view, 
and a consistent believer in evolution. God 
wrought through all of these men, and all 
preached the same sort of salvation through 
Jesus Christ. Whatever the differing shades of 
their opinions, there can be no doubt that they 



68 The: Rsvivai,. 

knew God by a blessed experience, and were per- 
sonally in tune with the Divine Spirit. 

We should also remember that the human 
element is divided into two, — the people conduct- 
ing the revival under the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit, and the people to whom they appeal. The 
latter have minds and wills like our own. They 
will not be compelled to yield these. The idea 
that God will force those wills at our solicitation 
is a mischievous one. If God were willing to 
do that, we would have no place in the work of 
redemption. It is our part so to present the 
truth as to induce the hearers under the influence 
of God's Spirit to yield themselves to God. Even 
after all has been done they may resist us. We 
Certainly can not blame God, and sometimes it 
is wrong for us to blame ourselves for failure in 
revival work. Men can resist. They resisted 
Jesus. They have all along resisted the Holy 
Spirit. They will resist us. 

At this point it might be well to deprecate the 
way in which so many of our good people call 
upon God for a revival ; also to point out the dif- 
ference between waiting on God and waiting for 
Him, and at the same time indicate the true use 
of prayer in this work. Our leaders constantly 
remind us that great revivals have been the di- 
rect answer to somebody's prayer. Some one 



Elements in a Revival. 69 

has wrestled mightily with God, and prevailed. 
An old lady, perhaps, has prayed ten years con- 
secutively for a revival, and in answer to her 
prayer it has finally burst upon the agitated com- 
munity. Therefore pray, and God will honor 
your petition by sending a revival. Revivals 
come down from above. They are never from 
below. 

Of course, after every revival some saintly 
soul is found who considers it a direct answer 
to his prayer. And in a certain sense it undoubt- 
edly is, but I think not in the sense in which he so 
considers it. I might add that the whole Church 
is calling upon the Lord, and that, too, almost 
continually, to send a revival. And herein lies 
the mischief of the teaching just referred to. 
We feel that when the Lord is ready, or when 
we have importuned sufficiently, the desired 
event will arrive. So we have shifted the re- 
sponsibility from our own shoulders, with the 
exception of the praying part, which is easy, to 
God. Thus we pray and wait. This is not 
healthful, nor right. God is neither reluctant nor 
unwilling to send this greatest of blessings. 

But we are frequently referred to the ex- 
ample of the apostles before the Pentecost, and 
told to "tarry at Jerusalem" until the Divine fire 
shall descend upon us. The apostles were not 



70 The: Revival. 

in a passive attitude. They were not waiting for 
the Lord as we are. They were waiting upon 
Him, which is a very different matter. They 
were praying, probably singing and exhorting 
one another. They were worshiping and draw- 
ing nigh that He might draw nigh unto them. 
They were getting equipped for a battle. They 
were girding themselves for action. They were 
talking with God, and getting* their souls ready, 
getting themselves ready, not their neighbors and 
the world. They were waiting upon God, and 
in due time were rewarded according to their 
faith and labor. 

It has been said, God can not bring to a man's 
memory what was never in his mind. This is 
equivalent to saying that even God can not bless 
nothing. What right has the man who never 
looks into his Bible to ask God to bless the Holy 
Scripture to his soul's profit! Too much time 
is spent in looking for God to do impossibilities. 
We are praying for God to bless nothing. I can 
easily understand how God can bless a kind 
word and save a soul by it. I can see how God 
can use sympathy or encouragement or any 
act for the salvation of souls ; but I can 
not perceive that we have any right to ask 
God to bless words we never speak and 
deeds we never do. We need to do some- 






Elements in a Revival. 71 

thing besides pray for God's kingdom to come. 
God can multiply the seed, but the seed must 
first be sown. 

Is there, then, no place for prayer in revival 
work ? Most assuredly ! We never shall have a 
revival without prayer; but the desired baptism 
must not be a baptism sought for some one else, 
but for ourselves. We must cease to expect that 
God in some mysterious way, in answer to some 
one's solicitation, will suddenly appear and force 
men and women into His kingdom. We must 
come to know that a revival is not a miraculous 
interposition of Divine energy. A revival is as 
natural as the swelling of the buds in spring. 
Cause and effect are as consistently related here 
as anywhere in nature. The Divine Agent is 
always ready and ever operating. The human 
instrument needs keying to the right pitch. To 
accomplish this, we must wait on God — wait on 
Him until duty is no longer a burden; until we 
are tender and appreciative of what He has done 
for us ; until all criticism passes away in a flood 
of love for our brethren; until our hearts are 
melted in love for burdened souls ; until we, like 
the little girl who was carrying a chunk of a 
baby along the street, upon being asked whether 
she was not tired carrying that big baby, re- 
plied, with eyes opened wide with surprise, 



72 The Revival. 

"Why, no ; he 's my brother." Wondrous 
strength ! Love makes heavy burdens light, and 
hard tasks easy. So let us tarry, waiting on God 
until we can do his work with sunshine and af- 
fection, not realizing the weight of the load 
through the love we bear our Savior and his err- 
ing brothers. 

"Yea, wait thou on the Lord." 

We are in readiness for our revival. How 
shall we conduct it? Will it be wise to employ 
an evangelist? 

Of late years it has become rather popular to 
take a fling at the evangelist. A more thoroughly 
berated person would be hard to find. But most 
of this abuse has been in reality a criticism of 
methods, and has been directed against the evan- 
gelist simply because he seems to be the exponent 
of bad methods. There is much justification for 
this; and yet I can not see the objection to an 
evangelist whose methods are right and whose 
purposes are praiseworthy. 

Men who, as a rule, have been out of the 
pastorate for years come to our gatherings, and 
wisely look as they impressively say, "Pastors, 
be your own evangelists." That sounds well, and 
I have no particular objection to it. Pastors 
should be soul-winners and engaged in the work 
all the time. But we are now considering the 



ELEMENTS IN A REVIVAL. 73 

question of revivals and protracted meetings. 
The question is not, Shall a pastor be an evangel- 
ist? but, Shall he limit the field to his own oper- 
ations ? Let us look at the conditions for a mo- 
ment. The stress of modern life is upon us, and 
the demands of to-day are very great — so great, 
in fact, that a man is scarcely equal to a large 
city parish unless nature has endowed him with 
a splendid physique, and, at that, nervous col- 
lapse is no uncommon occurrence among our 
ministers. One of the colossal blunders of the 
Church has been in multiplying labor altogether 
out of proportion to the number of laborers she 
has been willing to support. The worFd is on 
the move. Churches have become large, popu- 
lation has grown dense, new enterprises have 
necessitated new and increasing demands, while 
we have sought to meet all these exigencies with 
practically the same old equipment. 

There are pastors here this morning who 
have a fair-sized Church pass through their 
Church every year. It is no uncommon thing 
for a pastor to receive from one hundred and 
fifty to two hundred members each year, and to 
lose nearly as many by removals, deaths, letters, 
etc. Besides, there is a continuous and corre- 
sponding flow through his Sunday-school. Think 
of the new names, new faces, strange lives, new 



74 The Revival. 

histories, new friendships! Think of the losses 
and sorrows; of the struggles of the pastor to 
grasp the passing moment, and make the most of 
it ! Think of the multitude slipping by, and real- 
ize, if you can, what this must mean to a man 
during twenty years' experience! 

But, aside from this phase, the work is ex- 
ceedingly exacting and heavy. A week like the 
following is no uncommon week among our busy 
men : An address in A on Tuesday ; prayer- 
meeting Wednesday ; address in B on Thursday ; 
teachers'-meeting Friday; prepare for large 
Bible-class and two sermons for Sunday. All 
this, of course, has nothing to do with the end- 
less little duties a pastor is always being called 
upon to perform. This would not be worth 
speaking about if it were only one week in fifty. 
It is not, as you can testify. While not an aver- 
age week, it is a very common week in the lives 
of many who sit before me this morning. And 
all this while we are under the "system." We 
have to work whether we like work or not. The 
"system" provides a way to help us to remember 
that we must work, which is all right. A Hebrew 
is said to have climbed to the fourth-story office 
of a business concern and got into a warm dis- 
cussion with the proprietor. The proprietor's 
temper getting the better of him, he kicked the 



Elements in a Revival. 75 

disturber down stairs. The manager saw him 
coming, and accelerated his descent down the 
next flight, when a floor-walker took up the work 
and sent him down one more, where the janitor 
gladly welcomed the opportunity to land the poor 
victim through the door to the sidewalk. When 
the surprised Hebrew found himself suddenly 
outside, he shouted in astonishment and admira- 
tion, "My heaven ; what a system !" It is just 
that easy to accelerate a man's descent in our 
Church ; so we have to work for our lives, if not 
because we love to. Yes, "pastors, be your own 
evangelists," only do not in your enthusiasm for- 
get that collection for missions, nor that sum for 
General Conference expenses, nor that sum for 
Church Extension, nor any other sum that any 
other person happens to be interested in. A cer- 
tain bishop refused to appoint a man to an im- 
portant place because the man had failed in a 
collection the bishop had a peculiar interest in. 
Yes, pastors be your own evangelists ; but do n't 
— but I said that before. 

We are crowded to increase subscriptions ; 
crowded to increase collections; crowded to push 
the temperance question; and every man with a 
"special movement" rattling around in his head 
feels really hard towards us if we refuse to look 
through his eyes. 



7 6 The REVivAt. 

A modern city Church is a big business. But 
it differs from other business in this respect: 
The man at the head can not order and discharge 
at will. He has scarcely a paid employee, and 
must control his forces and accomplish definite 
and large results by a masterful system of diplo- 
macy. To-day there is many a better diplomat 
at the helm of a Gospel ship than sometimes can 
be found guiding the ship of state through the 
dangerous waters of foreign relations. 

Now, with social demands, reform demands, 
self-culture demands, and so forth, upon him, it 
seems to me almost suicidal for a man to plunge 
into six weeks of the fiercest work which comes 
to a faithful pastor, without help, unless he is 
possessed of a steel constitution and is utterly 
without nerves. If he is to do this, he should 
demand and secure release from some other 
quarters. 

But as I hinted a moment ago, much of the 
criticism against an evangelist is really criticism 
against his methods. But we ought to discrim- 
inate and put criticism where it belongs. Not 
all evangelists are eccentric, and many minis- 
ters use methods just as objectionable as those 
of the so-called professional evangelist. We are 
far from being guiltless in this respect; and the 
influence is even worse when those objectionable 



Elements in a Revival. 77 

methods are put in motion by a pastor, for it is 
certainly farther reaching. To my mind the or- 
dinary revival methods have been the direct cause 
of loss of revival power. Few men are statesmen 
enough to prefer future solidity to present show 
of success. The temptation to reap immediate 
reward is very great — so great that some think 
much more of what they can now lay hands on 
than all the treasures of God's eternal kingdom. 
The greedy gum-gatherer cuts the rubber-tree 
down so that he can get at once all the sap there 
is in the tree, and lets the future take care of 
itself. True, it is his immediate gain; but how 
much better for the world had the tree been 
tapped for a season's yield and allowed to pro- 
duce gum for years to come ! This illustrates the 
folly of all short-sighted exploitation. 

I say this especially for those who are for- 
ever blaming the clergymen of to-day for to- 
day's woes. The fact is, our lives are like the 
love of children — it is never paid backward but 
always forward. The love a child receives is 
never paid to a parent, but is given out to the 
next generation. I notice a man never goes out 
with the seed in one hand and his sickle in the 
other. It takes time to produce a harvest. The 
preachers of the next generation may have their 
teeth set on edge because we have eaten sour 



78 The: Revival. 

grapes; but we as certainly reap the rewards, 
both good and ill, of the wisdom and labors of 
those who have gone before. So I often think 
the present moment is one of repair. We must 
heal the breaches in the wall ; we must repair the 
temple. The direct results to-day may not be so 
apparent, but the future will rejoice. We are 
suffering to-day from the work — sometimes 
called enthusiastically the great work — of the 
past twenty years. 

There has been far too much trickery to trap 
people, making them the victims of the momen- 
tary wave, rather than bringing them in through 
the clear understanding of the mind and the ton- 
sent of the judgment. These traps are so de- 
signed as to make it embarrassing for the tricked 
person not to yield when the final test is made. 
If a person yields, it may be because he wants to 
be a Christian; it may be because he does not 
know what else to do. If the latter, he is almost 
certainly lost to the Church and to the kingdom 
of God. 

As a very extreme case, let me tell you of an 
actual experience at a camp-meeting. The 
preacher had done the best he could to get people 
started to the altar. No one would budge. Sev- 
eral tests were made, all of which were futile. 
Finally, in sheer desperation, he asked all people 



Elements in a Revival. 79 

who would like to go to heaven to rise. The re- 
sponse was well-nigh universal. "Now," said he, 
"let all those who think they are saved sit down." 
All sat down but one honest man, who, finding 
himself standing alone with the eyes of the con- 
gregation upon him, fell into his seat as though 
by a stroke of paralysis. The next motion was 
to seize his hat and stamp out of the building in 
a towering passion. That man had the sympathy 
of the entire congregation; all shared his indig- 
nation. What right has any man to do such dis- 
courteous and hateful things in the name of the 
Lord Jesus Christ! This is an extreme case; 
but you and I have witnessed scenes which have 
been exceedingly embarrassing for us as Chris- 
tian men to be called upon to witness. Then, 
what must have been the feelings of the object of 
our sympathy ! 

These methods tend to make men fear the 
religious service. They are afraid of getting 
cornered, and, not liking to be called upon to 
give battle publicly, use the other alternative and 
stay away. Who can deny the difficulty we have 
in getting unconverted people into any but the 
most dignified of our religious services! I con- 
tend that a man has a right to expect that his per- 
sonality is sure to be respected and his rights 
guarded when he comes into the house of God; 



8o The Revival. 

and the minister is the one to guard those rights, 
not trample upon them. But those rights have 
been disregarded until we have to-day the task 
of proving to the world that men's rights are to 
be held sacred before the people will again put 
themselves at our mercy by attending revival 
services. 

Must we, therefore, omit all divisions? By 
no means. We need simply to be respectful and 
resourceful. Divisions can always be made so as 
to leave some converted people in the seats with 
the unconverted. This will rob the situation of 
its discomforts and positive pain. Any man who 
desires to be courteous can find ways enough. 
Many unconverted people love to attend evangel- 
istic services, and they would attend, and finally 
be swept into the kingdom by the rising tide, 
w 7 ere it not for the disquieting fear of embarrass- 
ing situations. 

Another evil influence arises from the encour- 
agement so frequently given to members to speak 
to their neighbors in the pews. This invitation is 
usually accepted by the least tactful members of 
the flock, who do more to offend good taste than 
to help the Master's kingdom. Unless we have 
a personal acquaintance with an individual we 
have no right to single him out in a public con- 
gregation and make him the subject of a per- 



Elements in a Revival. 8i 

sonal appeal. If we do know him, and have not 
interest or courage enough to visit him in his 
home to talk over matters of religion, we cer- 
tainly are not fitted to make a successful appeal 
when hundreds of eyes are observing. Such work 
is an offense to the sober and intelligent, and 
tends to make the revival service one to be 
avoided. 

What has been said relates to the public as- 
sembly, and does not necessarily apply to the 
after-meeting, the inquiry-room, or the seekers' 
conference, and services of that character. Un- 
doubtedly the after-meeting or inquiry-room fur- 
nishes the best means of handling mixed congre- 
gations. The invitation to remain to these serv- 
ices can be given in such a way as to leave the 
leader the utmost freedom in handling those who 
attend. I know one successful pastor who for 
his own freedom explains the purpose of the 
after service, and, instead of urging all to stay, 
urges all to retire who are not in sympathy with 
the plan. In such a service the workers may toil 
without giving offense ; to these workers the con- 
scientious inquirer or troubled doubter may come 
without being compelled to open his heart to the 
curious and unsympathetic. 

Before leaving this phase of the subject I feel 
constrained to say a word about the point of em- 
6 



82 The: Revival. 

phasis in our appeals to sinners. We have been 
very eager to proclaim the marvelous love of 
God. This is as it should be. But in our eager- 
ness to make God seem loving we have made 
Him seem weak and sentimental, almost inca- 
pable of commanding in His own household. 
The message that should read, "Sin is such a 
hateful thing in the eyes of God, so fraught with 
disaster to his dominion and ruin to his children, 
that he has sought at the greatest cost to blot it 
out by winning the wayward heart to himself; 
salvation has come to you, not that God can not 
get on without you, but because you can not get 
on without God," — reads, "God is very sorry to 
see you a sinner ; your loved ones weep to see you 
a sinner; the Church weeps to see you a sinner; 
all would rejoice should you come to Jesus. 
Come, to make them happy, and you will be 
happy." So, instead of presenting the Gospel to 
men on the ground of their own need, and as a 
sovereign balm for their heart's hurt, we present 
it to them with the hurtful insinuation that they 
should accept it largely on account of the rest of 
us. Therefore, they so frequently come with the 
thought that it is a concession or sacrifice on 
their part, but that ultimately they will be re- 
warded for the sacrifice. That is the reason 



Elements in a Revival. 83 

man}' a man stands on the threshold of a new- 
life and figures on what he will have to give up. 
If he ultimately comes, he will talk, like some of 
the rest of us, of what he has given up for Jesus' 
sake. Mind you, for Jesus' sake ! These things 
have n't been given up for his sake, nor because 
there is no salvation with them, but for Jesus' 
sake. By our condescension we proclaim a God 
of weakness, strip the Gospel of its dignity, and 
rob love of its power. 

When we beg men almost on our knees to ac- 
cept Jesus, we are doing His cause an injury. 
Jesus is not in the world to be tolerated, or even 
accepted; He is here to be honored, loved, and 
obeyed. He comes to men, not asking a favor, 
but conferring one. The blessed Son of God is 
not here to wheedle men into the Church, but to 
command that men should everywhere repent and 
be saved. And the Church needs to realize His 
commanding power. So many of us have come 
into the Church under the influence I have spoken 
of, that we scarcely recognize any authority on 
God's part. Consequently we ministers are teas- 
ing the people to come to Church; teasing them 
to attend prayer-meeting; urging them to give 
their proportion to support Church enterprises, 
as they promised on joining the Church ; or ask- 



84 The: Revival. 

ing their loyalty in some Church crisis. O, the 
shame of it ! We are compelled to seek mere 
trifles as favors when we should be able to com- 
mand the hosts of the Lord to do great and noble 
things; and all because we have forgotten that 
God is Sovereign, though He is Love. Our 
standards must go higher. Our converts must 
bow before God. Our Sovereign Lord must be 
sovereign, and devotion, soul and body, to Him 
must be our watchword. 

From the human side a revival must be 
worked up. "Praying down" is Certainly good, 
but "working up" is as important. We not only 
need to get tuned to pitch, but also to prepare 
the "way of the Lord." Thorough and pains- 
taking preparation is a necessity, especially in 
large cities. It is no small matter to-day to get 
the attention of even Church members, so many 
different things are competing for recognition. 

The Church itself must be the foundation of 
the work. Only a small portion of any Church 
is ordinarily moved with the prospect of special 
services, so that the first problem is to reach those 
members least interested. A pulpit announce- 
ment, however emphasized, is not enough. The 
most satisfactory plan I have discovered is the 
following: After directing the sermons and all 
public services towards the revival idea for a 



Elements in a Revival. 85 

number of weeks, the following self-explanatory 
return postal was sent out : 

"Dear Member, — A revival of vital religion 
is the one need of the hour. Are you praying for 
it? Will you pray for it? I am eager to enter 
a campaign with this in view, but know how 
fruitless it would be without your support. Will 
you give what support you are able? If so, 
please take the matter to God. Next sign and 
mail the attached card that I may know of your 
determination to stand back of my efforts. Pray 
for us continually. Your Pastor." 

(Return) "Dear Pastor, — I am in hearty 
sympathy with your purpose to hold special serv- 
ices, and promise to attend, if possible, four 
evening services, counting Sunday night, each 
week for two weeks. Yours truly." 

This pledge could be varied to suit the local 
conditions. This was followed up with the an- 
nouncement that special meetings would not be 
commenced until at least two hundred were 
signed and returned. When that number was as- 
sured the following circular letter was sent to 
each member: 

"Dear Friend, — I take pleasure in sending 



86 The: Revival 

you this note. The reason is, that the success of 
our meetings is practically assured. Over two 
hundred replies have come to my request for 
pledges to support the cause, and more are com- 
ing in. All departments of the Church are rally- 
ing to aid the work. We expect a large chorus 
of devoted and interested workers to lead the 
singing. 

"Brother — . — . , of the Western 

Avenue Church, and Brother — . — . , of 

Grace Church, two of our most successful clergy- 
men, have consented to help. These men will be 
an inspiration. No one of us can afford to miss 
the meetings. We must pray for great things. 
We must expect great things. The meetings 
will begin January 30th, at eight o'clock, and will 
be held every night but Saturday for at least 
two weeks. Be in your place the first night. It 
is better to put our efforts into a short, decisive 
campaign. It is purposed to protect those who 
come. No improper divisions will be made in 
the public service. Do not fear that your friends 
will be rendered uncomfortable by being unwit- 
tingly forced into embarrassing declarations. 
Christian courtesy will be observed. 

"Your pastor begs your prayers, your pres- 
ence, and your help. But if for any reason, 
judged by yourself to be good and sufficient, you 



Elements in a Revival. 87 

can not give all of these, will you not, out of 
respect to my wishes, and the seriousness of this 
effort, refrain from entering into any social en- 
gagements during the progress of the meetings ? 
May our homes honor the cause for which Christ 
died and the Church lives! This courtesy will 
be possible to all. 

"Thanking you for your co-operation and 
praying God's richest blessings upon you and 
your homes, I remain, most earnestly, 

"Your Pastor." 

On the last day of the meeting this was fol- 
lowed up by the following postal : 

"Last meeting. Grand rally to-night. Do n't 
fail me. Yours cordially." 

The result was inspiring. The first meeting 
showed an interest such as had never been man- 
ifested before. The people were on hand, eager, 
expectant, and, although the services were held 
in the coldest season I ever experienced, some- 
times the thermometer falling to eighteen degrees 
below zero, the meetings were, on the whole, the 
most satisfactory I ever attended. This plan has 
since been used by other pastors with most grati- 
fying results. It has the advantage of advertising 



88 The: Revival. 

the services as well as calling each member's at- 
tention to his own responsibility. 

Some very important factors in the prosecu- 
tion of a revival are : 

First. The spiritual condition of the pastor. 
More depends upon this than upon any other 
minor factor. A holy man a pastor should be, of 
course, but a holy man is not necessarily a fer- 
vent man. In revival work the pastor needs to 
be baptized with fire. Cold obedience to law 
must yield to an enthusiastic devotion to the per- 
son of Christ. A cold, formal setting forth of 
religious truths is not nearly enough, however 
skillfully done. A passion for souls is no mere 
dream. We must love men. This will spread 
from the pastor to the Church. Says Jowett : "In 
personal and in corporate life we shall be cleansed 
by the spirit of burning. We march to holiness 
through fire. Like the air, the water, and every- 
thing else in the world, the heart, too, rises the 
higher the warmer it becomes. 'Because He 
hath set His love upon me I will set Him on high.' 
Elevation of character depends on warmth of 
affection. Here, then, is the secret why the 
Church is not radiant with the white robes of a 
sanctified life, and is still found wearing the gray, 
compromising garments of the world. The 
Church must rise above the world by the elevat- 



Elements in a Revival. 89 

ing force of her own internal heat. The Church 
will lose her worldliness when she gains the 'spirit 
of burning.' She will put on an unearthly beauty 
when she loses the spirit of cold discipleship, and 
is baptized with the fire of passionate love for 
the personal Christ." 

Second. The revival should have the right 
of way. The pastor should insist on this. In this 
busy age the Church itself seems too busy to take 
time to save souls. There are lecture courses, 
suppers, concerts, financial schemes, social func- 
tions, and I do n't know what not, to distract the 
people. These should suspend. I think it un- 
wise for the people to entertain at such seasons. 
If they can not attend, let their attention be called 
to the chief business of the hour by the absence of 
the usual round of pleasure. Every religious 
society should suspend during revival time. 
Then all should come together — as the followers 
of Jesus at Pentecost — in one place. We are too 
divided. With our multitudinous organization 
we scatter our forces. A power which can come 
from no other source comes from numbers. The 
leagues, aid societies, men's unions, and kindred 
organizations, should be marshaled for the su- 
preme work of the Church. It would be well, in 
some instances, if the pastor would refuse to at- 
tempt revival services until he could get the co- 



90 The Revival. 

operation and support he needs from all these 
sources. Many a revival is abortive just for the 
want of this co-operation. 

And, finally — for we must stop somewhere — 
after planning with our utmost care and best 
skill; after organizing and using every earthly 
means our brains can devise and our enthusiasm 
suggest; we must not depend upon them. Our 
constant dependence must be upon God. "Not 
by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith 
the Lord." Says Dr. Peck: "When Methodism 
ceases to be a revival Church her glory will have 
departed. In seeking revivals, many seek new 
machinery. But the need is more Divine power. 
Our agencies are all-sufficient. With the laity 
consecrated and empowered for individual effi- 
ciency, each pastor who is filled with a passion 
for souls and with Divine power has all the 
machinery needed for a glorious revival. Ex- 
ercising that consummate generalship over his 
Church forces which every pastor should learn 
to use, the power of God will, sooner or later, 
make him the victorious leader of a revival on 
every charge. When the pastor and people write 
on their banner, 'This one thing I do/ that thing 
will be done. God's power has affinity for will- 
ing workers." May God send us more power ! 



Elements in a Revival. 91 

'Jesus, Thine all-victorious love 
Shed in my heart abroad : 
Then shall my feet no longer rove, 
Rooted and fixed in God. 

O that in me the sacred fire 

Might now begin to glow ! 
Burn up the dross of base desire, 

And make the mountains flow. 

O that it now from heaven might fall, 

And all my sins consume ! 
Come, Holy Ghost, for Thee I call ; 

Spirit of burning, come. 

Refining fire, go through my heart, 

Illuminate my soul ; 
Scatter Thy life through every part, 

And sanctify the whole." 



CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM AND THE 
SUNDAY-NIGHT SERVICE. 

John Thompson. 

Intermission is costly. The fires in the great 
furnaces are kept continually burning, because 
cooling down and starting up again costs too 
much. Railroad men tell us that to slow down 
one of their fast through-trains is a loss of power, 
and increases the cost of running considerably. 
Continuity is God's law in nature. Beneath the 
repose of winter, nature's stirring life moves con- 
tinually forward. Underneath each autumn's 
falling leaf and winter's snows spring buds and 
summer roses are formed and nourished. Con- 
tinuous evangelism is best for the Church. The 
ideal is to have every Church an organization of 
saviors, and the pastor, with a zeal tempered by 
prudence, standing in the relation of savior to all 
classes of people. Some of the greatest Churches 
in Christendom never call in special evangelists; 
but the fire of evangelism is ever burning on the 
altar of the Church, and the evangelistic note is 
92 



Continuous Evangelism. 93 

ever present in the ministry of the pulpit. To 
keep this fire ever burning is better than letting 
things run down in the Church, and then, by spas- 
modic, red-hot, high-pressure methods, try to get 
up a revival. The protracted-meeting may al- 
ways have its place in the Church; but is it not 
possible for us to make better evangelistic use 
of the ordinary Sunday-night service, and keep 
it from losing its character in our Methodism as 
a center of evangelistic and converting influence ? 
The pastor's relation to this service is of first im- 
portance. Nearly everything depends on him. 
The service is his to conduct and direct, and he 
can make of it very much what he chooses to. 
In some communities his first problem is how to 
attract a congregation ; and here I give it as my 
judgment that the best method is to make the 
Church a preaching center. Side attractions may 
do for a time, but nothing will continuously hold 
like preaching. The force of the preacher's per- 
sonality must be felt in the entire service. Hid- 
ing behind the cross is a much overworked and 
misleading phrase. The Sunday-night audience, 
which usually contains a large floating element, 
must be specially impressed with the man in the 
pulpit. A marked personality will give momen- 
tum to a pulpit effort, which, without it, would 
be weaker than the efforts of the shorn Samson. 



94 The Revival. 

That the pastor must be intrinsically good if 
he would reach highest success in this service, is 
clearly recognized. If he is "a holy man of 
God," some responsive souls will be almost sure 
to feel it. No man can avoid unconscious self- 
revelation. Jesus could not be hid, neither could 
Judas. By means of the thermagogue the tem- 
perature of an object can be taken by looking at 
it. Souls are sensitive, too, and have larger op- 
portunity to test the quality of a pastor's life 
than they have that of a passing evangelist. A 
lawyer's plea, a physician's skill, may command 
their respect apart from character, but in their 
pastor they demand real goodness. His motive 
must be as transparent as a dewdrop, and far re- 
moved from the coast-line of self-interest, and 
his character as fixed in righteousness as the 
planet Mars in its orbit. 

Then, in addition to goodness, there must be 
manifested such a degree of mental activity as 
will command respect. The heathen never wor- 
ship an idol without eyes, which are the symbol 
of intelligence ; and in these days it is not enough 
to prepare for the pulpit in from hand-to-mouth 
fashion. The people must feel that they have in 
their pastor a man whose eyes are toward the 
light and not afraid of it. John saw "an angel 
standing in the sun." The pastor must stand in 



Continuous Evangelism. 95 

the light, and, by wide reading and diligent re- 
search and constant application, keep in touch 
with the currents of thought. We are witnessing 
a new type of evangelism in these days. English 
Methodism has appointed some of her strongest 
men to lead in evangelistic work and take charge 
of city missions. This new evangelism is more 
respectful of the intellect, is less dogmatic and 
more considerate of differences in temperament. 
It is reverent and quiet, but penetrates to the very 
roots of human life. 

In the Sunday-night service, perhaps more 
than in any other, there must be something posi- 
tive in the preaching. The people have come 
from an atmosphere shot through and through 
with intellectual doubt. The currents of unbe- 
lief run everywhere, but are specially strong in 
the big city. To the mind worn with interroga- 
tions it is refreshing to find in the pulpit a man 
who believes something, and who preaches it with 
the ring of prophetic authority. Dogmatic and 
ecclesiastical authority may be dying, but the 
authority of life and character and great convic- 
tions which stir the soul abides evermore. Chris- 
tian living and Christian doctrine must not be 
put asunder. The death knell of theology has not 
yet been rung. Theology is the most attractive 
study of our times. All classes are found dis- 



96 The Revival. 

cussing theological questions. The changing 
forms of credal expression are not a sign of the 
decay, but rather of the vitality, of Christian 
faith. The preacher must have his creed. The 
facts of astronomy and the other sciences inter- 
est him, but they are not his metier; he is a spe- 
cialist in Christian doctrine, and the pulpit is his 
throne of power. It is an unwarranted assump- 
tion to regard such a man as narrow. It is per- 
fectly possible to share in the tolerant temper and 
broadmindedness of a twentieth-century outlook, 
and yet preach positively the great central truths. 
So while some prate about their aphelion, the man 
who would make his Sunday-night service ring 
with the note of evangelism must hold to some 
perihelion of truth. 

Then, added to his personal belief in the truth, 
he must have faith in its effectiveness on any 
kind of an audience. Paul said, "Both to Greeks 
and barbarians, both to wise and unintelligent, 
a debtor I am, so as to me there is readiness also 
to you who are in Rome to announce the glad tid- 
ings of the Christ; for power of God it is unto 
salvation to every one that believes." In what 
sense was Paul a debtor? Was he indebted to 
them for his theology? If so, how? Up to the 
present, critics have failed to discover any real 
Hellenic influence in Paul's writings. What 



Continuous Evangelism. 97 

does Paul mean when he says he is a debtor? 
We may find his meaning if we remember that 
Paul was a preacher first, and a theologian after- 
wards. Paul went everywhere preaching the 
glad tidings, and found it effective. He experi- 
mented, so to speak, on Greek and barbarian, 
wise and illiterate and found the message 
adapted to all classes as the light is to all eyes. 
He tested the simple facts of the Gospel, and 
found them effective; and then, like a scientist, 
he put his facts together and constructed his 
theology. The great facts were a risen, a cruci- 
fied, an ascended, and an ever-living Christ. 
These facts are mighty still. Our theories may 
prove abortive and unsatisfactory; but the facts, 
never. The scientist can give no satisfactory 
theory of electricity, but the force of its current 
can be tested daily. We have no very under- 
standable theory of light, but it is here and is 
sweet to the eye. Radium emits rays of light, 
which can only be felt and not seen, and cancers 
are cured by it ; but nobody can explain the mys- 
tery. So there may be no satisfactory theory of 
our great Gospel facts, but when earnestly pre- 
sented they are effective everywhere. The scien- 
tist's cry for more light has had a large answer 
in Madam Curie's discovery of the most power- 
ful radio-active crystal ever known. So the soul's 
7 



98 The Revival. 

cry for light, and the deepest questionings of the 
heart and mind, find most satisfactory answer in 
the evangel of the Son of God. If these facts 
were fully realized by us, our preaching would 
be better than we ourselves are. Just as great 
musicians and painters and poets are sometimes 
lifted by the vision of great ideals of truth and 
beauty and harmony to do work far above the 
level of their ordinary living, so if these Gospel 
facts possessed us as they did the apostles we 
would experience such elevation of soul as would 
make our preaching extraordinarily effective. 

Then again, if we would succeed in Sunday- 
night evangelism the message must come from 
a heart warm with the fires of kindliest sym- 
pathy. To keep the heart warm and tender is 
not the easiest task. The sun would become cold 
and dead as a burned-out cinder because of its 
constant giving out of helium were it not con- 
tinuously fed by meteors; so the large toll on 
our sympathies will cool the heart unless daily 
fed by the "Lover of souls." "They that sow in 
tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and 
weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless 
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves 
with him." 

Do we ever weep ? I do not mean shed cheap 
lachrymal secretions or elocutionary tears, but 



Continuous Evangelism. 99 

tears that have the blood and sweat of brain and 
heart in them. Do we speak of hell so that our 
tears are felt, and talk of the cross in a way that 
reveals its blood-red agony? Have we entered 
into the fellowship of His sufferings and the 
travail of His soul ? If we have, then, like Him, 
we shall be satisfied, and see the pleasure of the 
Lord prosper in our hands. More heart-power in 
the pulpit would make many an effort that seems 
now to be a failure exceedingly fruitful in re- 
sults. When heart speaks to heart, all the mag- 
netic currents between pulpit and pew are stirred. 
To be as polished as steel, but just as cold and 
hard, will never draw. Coldness repels, but 
warmth draws. Jesus Christ's heart was a min- 
iature ocean of love. So should ours be. Let us 
not be economical here. The reason should be 
fired and our thinking shot through with Christ's 
passion and love. Sometimes when I look on 
the fallen in our city streets, so cursed and bru- 
talized by sin that all their finer feelings seem 
to have perished, a feeling of disgust creeps over 
me ; but when I turn to the Garden and the Cross, 
and think of Christ's love and the Father's pity 
and of some mother's yearning heart, my heart 
melts, and I feel like going to them and saying, 
"Brother," "Sister," out of a full heart. For are 
they not the prodigal children of our Father in 



u°* 



ioo The Revival. 

heaven? To me they are not harlots and de- 
bauchees, but my brothers and sisters in need of 
help and sympathy. There is an angel in every 
fallen girl and brutish man. O that we could 
love them and brood over them till the angel 
comes out, as the harvests are made to appear 
by the coaxing of the warm sunshine and the tug- 
ging of the sunbeams at the roots of tree and 
plant and grass ! Paul speaks of rilling up "that 
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ." Are 
we not called to be partakers of his sympathy and 
suffering love in redeeming the world? I have 
gathered seaweed, and taken it home, and hung 
it up behind the door to be a boy's barometer. 
When it hardened and shriveled up, I would steep 
it in water until it softened, and expanded, and 
revealed all the delicate tracery peculiar to sub- 
aqueous plants. So when, after meeting with 
deception, vacillation, and rebellion among peo- 
ple, I feel a congealing of my ardor and a stifling 
of my sympathy, I steep my mind in meditations 
on Gethsemane and Calvary till my heart burns, 
and I "love because He first loved." If the sun 
only gave out light, the earth would soon be a 
revolving sepulcher and a rotating iceberg. It 
is its heat that makes harvests possible. So our 
reasoning must be fired by love and our think- 
ing shot through and through with a passionate 



Continuous Evangelism. ioi 

love of souls. John was a burning as well as a 
shining light. 

Up to this point nothing has been said about 
the Holy Ghost. All reference to Him would be 
omitted but for the fact that no paper on evangel- 
ism would be considered complete without a ref^ 
erence to spiritual baptism. We do not empha- 
size too much our need of the Holy Ghost, but 
we are in danger of underestimating His depend- 
ence on us. We are to be yielded up as His in- 
struments — or rather weapons — and we should 
make of ourselves the best possible weapons for 
His use. A plain man, praying for a young min- 
ister, said, "Lord, make him a broom-handle 
rather than a polished shaft." This earnest 
brother was afraid the polished-shaft qualities 
might tend to over self-confidence. But it is not 
irreverent to say that the Holy Ghost may be ex- 
pected to do more with a polished blade than 
with a broom-handle. First Corinthians i, 25, 26, 
2J y has been much misunderstood in this connec- 
tion. "God Almighty needs man," said Luther. 
But if, on all our best efforts and on our best 
selves, the fire of the Holy Ghost falls, who can 
measure the possibilities of our ministry ? Wide- 
spreading prairie-fires are often started by the 
mere focusing of the sun's rays on broken bottles 
carelessly scattered by travelers ; and what mar- 



102 The Revival. 

vels science is doing by an intelligent use of 
God's forces in nature ! O, if we knew the "law 
of the Spirit," and by self-denial and consecra- 
tion learned the art of laying hold of God's forces 
in the spiritual kingdom, what wonders in con- 
viction, conversion, and consecration we might 
see on Sunday nights ! Are we ready, brethren, 
to pay the price in unreserved self -dedication, and 
Cut loose from the coast-line of self-seeking? 
The same sun that made paradise bloom with 
beauty, and embroidered the orchards of Canaan, 
and ripened the grapes of Eshcol, and sweetened 
the cedars cf Lebanon, is ours to-day. So the 
same spirit 

" That brightened Isaiah's vivid page, 
And breathed in David's hallowed lays," 

is ours. The same forces that operated in fash- 
ioning worlds at the dawn of creation are still 
at work producing new creations. So the same 
spiritual energy that stirred three thousand on 
the day of Pentecost, and which, through the 
ages, has been penetrating to the roots of society, 
and sending up streams of new life everywhere, 
is at our command. We ought to expect the 
Spirit's presence in every service to witness to 
the Gospel facts we preach. 

In determining the character of the service 



Continuous Evangelism. 103 

and the methods to be employed the pastor needs 
the wisdom and genius of the seer. Men of guid- 
ing genius were never more needed than now. 
We have talented men in abundance ; but where 
are the men of genius, men of originality, of ini- 
tiative, of inventive faculty, who can defy prece- 
dent, break through hoary conventions, and lift 
the Church out of the ruts, and mark out new 
paths through old woods ? We need men of com- 
manding genius to win the ear of our great 
Church and stir us as a prophet sent from God. 
The men of talent would soon fall into line, for 
talent yields to genius. Each pastor must be the 
guiding genius in his own Church, and adopt 
methods suited to the community where he labors. 
We must be fruitful in methods and divinely in- 
ventive, so that we may "by all means save some." 

My methods, which have worked well and 
proved successful in a large Church and in a com- 
munity where extremes meet, and in an atmos- 
phere shot through with every current of thought, 
can be stated briefly. 

First. We have a Sunday-night service equal 
in dignity and order to that of the morning. We 
have the best in music from a large, well-trained, 
vested choir. The hymns are carefully selected 
from the Methodist Hymnal. I am partial to 
our Methodist Hymnal because, in singing from 



io4 The Revival. 

it, I know my people are singing Methodist doc- 
trine. The hymns are not jumbled together in 
it, and it is full of "experimental and practical 
divinity." So we use the Hymnal. Then the 
taking and consecration of the offering is made 
as impressive as possible. We do not treat the 
evening service as if it was second-rate to the 
morning. We put our best into it. The whole 
service is arranged so as to aid the soul in the 
loftiest of all exercises — the worship of God. 

Second. We have a question box. This ex- 
periment has worked well. The inquirer is in 
every audience. W r e have on a Sunday night 
hundreds of young people, and many of them 
students in the university ; so we had a box fixed 
and gave them an opportunity to ask questions. 
Not a frivolous question has come into the box. 
All have been serious, and many of them sug- 
gested themes for sermons. Never a week has 
passed without some questions. 

Third. We sometimes throw open the church 
parlors for a social half hour after the evening 
service. This is for the special benefit of young 
people away from home and strangers in the city. 
It gives us a chance to meet them, and also re- 
lieves the lonesomeness for many a heart. Many 
young people have told me that the hour after 
Church on a Sunday night is the most lonesome 



Continuous Evangelism. 105 

in all the week, when, far away from home and 
friends, they have only a small rented room to 
go to. By means of the social half hour we try 
to help such. 

Fourth. We hold an inquiry-meeting. This 
to us is better than an after-meeting in the large 
auditorium. The rights of all are respected. We 
rarely have a Sunday night without some tarry- 
ing for prayer and talk about religion. These 
methods have been successful. We are open to 
suggestions all the time. Each pastor must dis- 
cover such methods as he can best use and as 
are adapted to the conditions of his service. That 
more may be accomplished in our Sunday-night 
services we must all admit. Let us, then, make 
of ourselves the best of messengers in delivering 
the best of messages, and give the people our 
best in thought and feeling. The Holy Spirit 
will honor all such efforts. 



CHICAGO METHODISM. 

W. E. Tilroe, D. D. 

To say that the problem of the world is the 
city has become cant and commonplace. The 
focalizing of markets, culture, politics, and piety 
came early and stays late. Nations and peoples 
have been their capitals and holy places. History 
is a tale of great cities, as surely as it is "the 
biography of great men." Babylon, Jerusalem, 
Athens, Rome, London, New York, are stories 
of the earth. Somewhat of all this is sentiment, 
to be sure; but sentiment is potential, and with 
every passing year the city is symbol and syn- 
onym of dominion. An evangelism that can not 
dominate the city will never rule the world. This 
way lies the future, the battle, the pivot of em- 
pire, victory, or despair. 

Losing small time at the door, it is well to 
call attention early to the value in city evangel- 
ism of vested funds and well-considered philan- 
thropies. The frequent mastery of Romanism at 
the centers of influence has much of its secret 
106 



Chicago Methodism 107 

here. It acquires property, holds property, sells 
property only to buy better, borrov/s on property 
at low interest, improving property it improves 
it well ; in a word, it commands the respect of 
the business world, and by wisdom in finance 
gets a hearing for religion. An introduction is 
half an interview. A ring at the bell may be 
index of character. Trinity corporation in New 
York means much of Protestant Episcopal dom- 
inance of the metropolis, and standing in the 
metropolis means the ear of the Republic. Busi- 
ness America listens well to a business religion. 
That the pioneer circuit-rider rode a good horse 
never hurt his sermon. Methodism, a thing of 
affairs, largely interprets Methodism the world 
evangel. 

A recent review of Chicago Methodism by 
the Hon. Arthur Dixon has large significance 
just here. "Chicago had a Methodist church 
before she had a city charter. It was the first 
church in Chicago. William Lee, the first or- 
dained resident preacher of Chicago, was a Meth- 
odist who worked at his trade as blacksmith, and 
preached on Sundays. Rev. Jesse Walker was 
appointed to Chicago Mission in 1831. June 16, 
1 83 1, Rev. Stephen R. Beggs organized the first 
Methodist Church of ten persons in the log 
schoolhouse near Canal Street and Wolfs Point. 



108 The: Revival. 

The first Methodist Quarterly Conference was 
held in 1833, and the first church, 26 by 38 feet, 
was built in 1834, by Henry Whitehead and 
ethers, at the corner of North Water and Clark 
Streets, at a cost of five hundred dollars. This 
building was later moved across the river on 
scows to the corner of Clark and Washington 
Streets. January 30, 1845, tne trustees resolved 
to erect a new church-building, for which the 
contract was let to Robert Sheppard for the sum 
of twelve thousand dollars, in February, 1845. 
The first composite building — for rental and wor- 
ship — was erected in 1858, and cost seventy thou- 
sand dollars. The earliest appropriation by First 
Church to the aid of other Churches was on Oc- 
tober 3, 1865. The total donations to the pres- 
ent time (1905) exceed six hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars. In all, the First Church has 
paid donations to one hundred and thirty-eight 
Methodist Churches in this city, and she is well 
named the "Mother of Churches." Such was 
the growth of the First Methodist Church, the 
richest Church in the 'city in its possessions, 
while, by the peculiar terms of its charter, the 
trustees are able to use but two thousand dollars 
of its large yearly income for its own purposes." 
That every Methodist Church in Chicago, 
with possibly a dozen exceptions, is a monument 



Chicago Methodism. 109 

to vested funds, and that the total exceeds six 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, is surely 
more than a wind-blown straw. It is the track of 
wisdom and the call of God. Providentially on 
the ground at the beginning, acquiring property, 
handling it wisely, thinking of other men and 
days to come, the fathers of Chicago Methodism 
being dead, yet speak. Whitehead, Carver, 
Jenkins, Rockwell, Reynolds, Lunt, Evans, Good- 
rich, Wheeler, Clancy, Swift, Davis, Wanghop, 
Botsford, Sheppard, and many another worthy 
name, should live forever. Nor will those who 
tarry with us be forgotten, "when the strong man 
bows himself and the daughters of music are 
brought low." These same men, in large part, 
founded Northwestern University, and the City 
Missionary and Church Extension Society, and 
the Chicago Training-school, the Old People's 
Home, the Deaconess Movement, and Wesley 
Hospital. The air about us we breathe, it 
clothes us as a garment ; we sport in it, and for- 
get that it has weight and is life. So the measure 
of these ancient foundations in city evangelism is 
rarely taken, and they are greatest among them 
all. The spoken words of our mighty men, both 
ministers and laymen, have vanished in the haze 
of years, but immortal youth is in their noble 
deeds. 



no The Revival. 

This writer can think of nothing better than 
to have the possible ten million dollars controlled 
by Chicago Methodism doubled and multiplied. 
What might this First Church do with a yearly 
income of fifty thousand dollars, and the City 
Missionary Society with fifty thousand more, 
with Wesley Hospital, Northwestern University, 
and all else, forever beyond distresss? Why 
might not Grace Church, Wabash Avenue, Trin- 
ity, and Centenary be income-bearing properties 
for the future needs of city evangelism? Each 
of them is now an estate of from seventy to one 
hundred thousand dollars, and the growth of the 
city around them is a providence leading to great 
things. Should they become one quarter the 
value of First Church to city Methodism, it 
would mean another half million dollars given 
away to one generation. To be simply sons of 
our fathers is to see these dreams come true. 

To particularize at length is a ready tempta- 
tion. The evangelizing force of a great univer- 
sity with four thousand students and instructors, 
is not a little to Chicago Methodism. The time 
will come when the altar of prayer and the 
teacher's desk will not seem such strangers, in 
the house of their friends at least. No statistical 
table can tell the value of Wesley Hospital. The 
deaconess gets her board and clothes, and she 



Chicago Methodism. hi 

gives her life. The Orphanage and Old People's 
Home remind us constantly of our priceless herit- 
age in the cradle and the grave. The City Mis- 
sionary Society has been with us thirty-three 
years, has founded or given aid to one hundred 
and five Churches, distributes yearly some twen- 
ty-five thousand dollars, and has furnished alto- 
gether three hundred thousand dollars to build 
up Methodism in our borders. Surely Methodist 
Chicago has a fortune in such friends. 

But there is more to city evangelism than 
kindly philanthropy and supplies of money. There 
must be actual contact with the people, and, as 
every one knows, the test of the proposition is at 
the congested centers. As to Chicago Methodism, 
the great thing needed is intelligent concentra- 
tion. Within what may be known as the busi- 
ness district there are now eight parishes. Every 
one of them is confessedly mission territory, or 
on the edge of so becoming. Five of them are 
actually in receipt of outside help, the congrega- 
tion itself being depleted and poor. On the very 
ground where Chicago is shaking the earth, 
Methodism is simply holding on. For that mat- 
ter, religion is holding on; for the problem has 
found no master. The remedy is in concentra- 
tion. Suppose four parishes in room of eight, — 
a Grace Church parish, a Trinity parish, a Cen- 



ii2 The Revival. 

tenary parish, and a First Church parish. This 
would cover the territory, give ease and economy 
of administration, better utilize the available cap- 
ital, and displace our present drifting with sys- 
tem and purpose. From these centers small 
missions could be directed wherever needed, in- 
stitutional agencies could be installed as called 
for, deaconesses and workers of all sorts could 
be sent out, commanding congregational serv- 
ices could be maintained, and, in short, what is 
now done indifferently might be done well. The 
monumental weakness of Chicago Methodism is 
its lack of solidarity. Each presiding elder is a 
law to himself ; each preacher attends to his par- 
ticular business; each Church abides at home; 
each little mission scrambles for existence; resi- 
dent bishops, no blame to them, are residents of 
the earth; and we exhibit our impotence pre- 
cisely where it does most damage. To learn that 
the whole is something more than the sum of the 
parts is the beginning of wisdom just now. 

"The Church should cease touching this prob- 
lem with the ends of its fingers, and should lay 
hold of it as both the Bible and observation tell 
us wicked men urge their projects, 'with both 
hands earnestly.' Chicago does things on a large 
scale, and unless the work of God keeps step 
with its business enterprises, it does not command 



Chicago Methodism. 113 

the attention and interest of the people." These 
ringing words of Rev. G. D. Cleworth, long time 
a city pastor, are speech of one who knows. 
Vested interests, personal contact, ritualism, 
everything should go forward with a will, if we 
would be at home in this city where we dwell. 

To my mind, the First Church problem is 
more simple than it seems. The one essential 
thing is a commanding Methodist service. What- 
ever the wise men do in the really complicated 
matter of the real estate, let there be subsidized 
and maintained a Sabbath gathering equal to any- 
thing in the city. Great preaching, inspiring 
music, financial comfort, social warmth, and spir- 
itual enthusiasm should be commonplace at a 
spot like that. Is there any hope of a family 
Church at the business Center? Only a com- 
manding service would make it possible. The 
same conditions which crowd the theaters for 
pleasure, would do something for religion. Are 
institutional methods needed here ? A great con- 
gregation would provide therefor. What can the 
deaconess do down-town? Anything she is 
asked, is there a congregation to centralize and 
conserve her work. Is there a great hotel popu- 
lation, and at all times an army of strangers in 
town? The contagion of numbers is the magnet 
that will best draw them. Has old First Church 



ii4 The Revival. 

always been a feeder to the suburban Churches? 
Suppose some hundred of them should see the 
point and keep a representative man or a repre- 
sentative family in the services here. Could they 
not save and pass on to the permanent home 
scores who now drift and are lost? Is it desir- 
able that the rental values of the business rooms 
be held at good figures? Would a mighty re- 
ligious service hinder that as over a service in 
decline ? Is it worth while to hear the great men 
of the earth who reach the city from time to 
time? The fact is, a great congregation in this 
down-town Renter is the key to a dozen locks we 
would like to break. With this First Church 
program a mission to some tireless soul, as Af- 
rica was to Livingstone, or London to Hugh 
Price Hughes, a door would open wide to Pente- 
costal visions and dreams. 

Of equal emphasis with mastery down-town 
is the value of the residential Church. As to 
Chicago Methodism, this now means eight lan- 
guages, some two hundred congregations, thirty 
thousand members, forty thousand Sunday-school 
attendance, and property values exceeding three 
million dollars ; in a word, its bulk and strength. 
LTp-town Methodism is the one hope of Meth- 
odism down-town. Vested funds, spectacular 
and sentimental considerations, with judicious 



Chicago Methodism. 115 

advertisement, will do something in the business 
centers; but the residential Churches must in- 
variably find the men to manage these things, 
and take care of their own as well. So up-town 
Methodism is not great enough to keep house 
for itself and come down-town too. There will 
soon be, religiously, no down-town to come to. 
The time draws near when no man willingly 
will call the down-town territory his home. Only 
those who work and trade, and eat and study, 
and loiter and make sport, will have occupation 
there. As men go out of town to die and take 
their last long sleep, so they will refuse to live 
where they do business. Ease and economy of 
transit takes living to the suburbs. The down- 
town district is to be a box of tools or toys, and 
less and less a temple. Men travel for health, 
business, culture, and pleasure; but worship is 
of the heart, and stays near home. The man on 
his knees travels up ; he does not go abroad. For 
visitors, boarders, hotel attaches, street waifs, 
and wanderers there will needs be due provision 
down-town, but city worship as a whole will be 
in the residential Church. Here will be the body 
and soul of city evangelism. As the down-town 
office or market sends its factory or actual busi- 
ness elsewhere, so the real work of metropolitan 
religion is to be done where the people live. As 



n6 The Revival. 

Pastor Cleworth, above quoted, well says, "There 
is an up-town as well as a down-town problem." 
The first duty of any Church is to the parish 
where it is planted. If institutional methods, 
or ritualistic methods, or evangelistic methods, or 
complications of all methods, reach the people, 
let the people be reached. The hook and bait 
and line and fisherman are all important, and the 
tastes of the fish as well. Whether the given 
Church is down-town or in a residence com- 
munity, the first call is to make it a success just 
there. On that principle I have said that at the 
centers concentration is wisdom. Four com- 
manding parishes should stand where we now 
have eight of another sort. There are a few resi- 
dence neighborhoods where the choice is of a 
great Church or no Church. The mastery of St. 
James and First Church, Evanston, has been won 
after that fashion. On just the same principle, 
however, the great body of our Churches, ten in 
a dozen, must stand where the people live. That 
means small Churches and plenty of them. Chi- 
cago Methodism in this regard has been wise in 
its generation. It has sixty-five Churches of less 
than one hundred members, one hundred and 
thirty Churches of less than three hundred mem- 
bers, and but thirteen Churches exceeding five 
hundred members. Including probationers, the 



Chicago Methodism. 117 

average is less than two hundred members to the 
Church. Adding the Methodism in foreign lan- 
guages, almost entirely in small Churches, it will 
be seen how astonishingly these sons of Wesley 
have kept close to the people. When the philoso- 
phy of the great Church shall be carried out as 
well, they will solve the problem of city evangel- 
ism as it concerns them. A rigid ritualism, or 
a system exploiting authority, may rightly em- 
phasize the spectacular and organic by gather- 
ing its children preferably in great Churches. 
For Methodism, whose unit is the individual, 
whose notion of character and destiny compels a 
struggle long as life, whose progress is only in 
intelligence and free choice, and whose parish 
is the world, the dynamic center will be the small 
Church. When religion becomes indigenous and 
every home a sanctuary, it may be different ; but 
till then this same small Church will be the tem- 
ple of the race. There was no synagogue in 
Eden, and there is no temple in the New Jeru- 
salem. Our notions of great Churches may be 
easily overdone. 

To every one of these small Churches, the 
matter of its location is weakness or strength 
in its evangelism. Its financial burdens are not 
seldom disintegration and decay. The removal 
of debts is owned of God as mightily as prayers 



n8 The Revival. 

and sermons. The annual deficit is a daily dis- 
grace. The sort of pastor now regnant is no 
light affair. A ministerial failure is nowhere so 
dangerous as in a small Church. Unity in the 
membership, both as to brotherly kindness and 
aggressive purpose, means much. Social condi- 
tions may be an iceberg to the rising sun. Life 
and power spiritually are indispensable. A dozen 
things are of more consequence than that over- 
worked and underfed idea of methods. Method 
is only a how of doing things. A spring bursts 
out of the mountain side, and may find the valley 
by channels innumerable. The breaking out is 
the thing worth while, and not the rut it runs in. 
Up-town evangelism, down-town evangelism, 
cut-of-town evangelism, world evangelism, needs 
nothing so much as to break out. The rising 
of the waters will care for the channel. 



NEW PATHS THROUGH AN OLD 
FOREST. 

Polemus H. Swift, D. D., Ph. D. 

There is a growing interest in the immense 
subject of evangelism. Pastors are asking 
eagerly for the secret and note of victory. The 
laity are quite as anxious as the ministry that 
the kingdom of God should come in power. To 
some watchers the sky is red with promise of a 
new and better day than this old world has ever 
known. There are others who are far from hope- 
ful, if not altogether pessimistic. There are 
those who declare that, spiritually, the times are 
cut of joint; that the Church is fast losing the 
distinguishing characteristic that constitutes the 
guarantee of victory; that she is far behind the 
times, is speaking a dead language, and righting 
the new and awful battles of this age of contend- 
ing giants with the antiquated weapons of a pre- 
vious conflict; that she is playing with the im- 
mense problem of human redemption and world- 
saving, while agonizing wails of despair and 
119 



120 The: Revival. 

piteous pleas for help come from the dark gulf 
of human need. 

These questioning, doubting, hesitating, half- 
despairing souls are just as certain as their hope- 
ful, optimistic brethren that something ought to 
be done, and that something must be done. 
Every honest student of the religious life of the 
age knows that the Church is not doing the work 
she ought to do. She is not increasing in numer- 
ical strength as she clearly ought to do. She is 
not reaching the laboring men as she must do or 
fail at last. She is not holding men, and particu- 
larly young men in our great cities, as is her duty. 
She is not grappling with the problems of young 
life as she must. She is not dominating the 
cities, or even holding them, as is imperative in 
this age of intense urban life. 

We need and must have a "new evangelism. ,, 
When it comes it will do the work of the old 
Gospel of power. It will save society because it 
will save the individuals that make up society. 
It will transform and transfigure as divine move- 
ments always have done. It will capture the 
kingdoms of society, literature, art, music, soci- 
ology, philosophy, politics, and business ; for it is 
written, "The kingdoms of this world shall be- 
come the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ." 
It will hasten the reign of righteousness. It 



New Paths. 121 

will usher in the golden age that must follow the 
application of the Golden Rule to life. The 
evangelism that has a less broad horizon and an 
inferior goal can not be the whole Gospel and 
win in this age of world-movements as the Gos- 
pel conquered during the first four centuries of 
the Christian era. 

There is an "Old Forest" of human need, of 
alienation from God and righteousness, of wrong 
being and wrong doing, of corrupted lives, of 
white lies and outbreaking sins, of heartaches and 
failures, of homes blighted by the power of rum, 
of lives degraded by the fiends of appetite and 
passion, of sin-seared consciences and weakened 
wills, of curses that have followed in the wake 
of selfish living, of moral pestilence and spiritual 
leprosy, of lives darkened by giant wrongs as 
well as by what the near-sighted ones have called 
petty sins, of industrial unrest and social iniquity. 
What a great "Black Forest" of human need ! 

This forest must be traversed. God is calling, 
"Awake ! Awake ! Put on thy strength, O Zion." 
The Church, in many places, is more than half 
asleep on the lap of the Delilah of worldliness. 
She is doing something, but the battle must be 
pushed to the gates. We must pray, work, and 
live for the greatest revival the world has ever 
seen, or we shall come short of what God ex- 



122 The Revival. 

pccts of us. God's work must be done. The 
longing, dying sons of men must be lifted till 
they can see the face of Jesus Christ. Our cities 
must be captured and held for righteousness, or 
the beginning of the end is at hand. White har 
vests must be gathered in. 

In our search for new paths we must not 
forget that there are some absolutely necessary 
"old ways" that have been allowed, in large meas- 
ure, to become choked with an undergrowth of 
thorns and briers. These must be opened. There 
are some revivals that are necessary before the 
''new evangelism" can sweep in power and vic- 
tory over the world. 
-v^ There must be a revival of prayer for the 
conviction, conversion, and saving of lost men 
and women. There never was a great soul-win- 
ning campaign without agonizing prayer for the 
unsaved. When parents are praying for their 
children, and children are praying for their par- 
ents; when wives are praying for their hus- 
bands, and husbands are praying for their wives ; 
when Sunday-school teachers are praying for 
their scholars, and young people are praying for 
their associates ; when the whole Church is pray- 
ing for the salvation of the unsaved, — then the 
time will be short till you hear the "sound of 
a going" in the tops of God's trees. I will not 



New Paths. 123 

attempt to explain the philosophy of the case ; 
but if the religious history of the world teaches 
any lesson worth learning, we know that "the 
day of His power" comes after the "morning 
watch" of prevailing prayer. 

There must be a revival of evangelistic 
preaching. There is a great deal of evangelical 
preaching in our day, but comparatively little 
real evangelistic preaching. By evangelistic 
preaching, I mean that which seeks directly to 
win men to make choice of Jesus as Savior and 
Lord now. The pulpit of our day spends too 
much time for the edification of saints. It should 
speak more frequently and powerfully to sinners. 
The saints would need less nursing if they were 
devoted to the work of making more saints. This 
is what may well be called a pedagogical age. 
The tendency is too strongly set toward ethical 
teaching. The saints must be taught, but sin- 
ners must be converted also. One need of the 
age — and to me it is a supreme need — is the voice 
of the prophet of God. The pulpit must speak 
for God to the men who do not know Him, and 
seek to get men to see Jesus Christ and surrender 
to Him. 

We need to raise up a new race of pastor- 
evangelists. There has been a demoralizing, dan- 
gerous drift in these last days. The Church, as 



i?4 1^3 RsvivAt. 

well as the ministry, has come to rely too much 
on professional evangelists. Now, there is not a 
word to be said against professional evangelists 
of the sane type. They are God-sent as well as 
Scripturally sanctioned, and have done a most 
marvelous work in the Church. But the call and 
success of the professional evangelist should not 
excuse the pastor from doing the same kind of 
work. Every pastor is a shepherd, but he 
must be something more. He must be a 
soul-winner. His first call is to win men 
to Jesus Christ. There is a tendency in the 
Church not to expect conversions unless a pro- 
fessional evangelist comes upon the scene of ac- 
tion. That is one of the surest signs of decay. 
No man, who is called of God to preach the 
world-conquering Gospel of His Son, can be less 
than an evangelist. There are those who feel that 
their temperament and education unfit them for 
this work. They can teach, but not evangelize. 
Their place is in the schools and not in the pul- 
pit. The men who stand in the pulpits of our 
great Church must be pastor-evangelists. If 
they can not win men to God in one way they 
must do it in another. If a man is failing at this 
point, his failure is absolute and complete. If a 
pastor is not a soul-winner how can he look the 
Master in the face ? And the Church must stand 



New Paths. 125 

by the pastor-evangelist. If she will, he will do 
her far more good than the star preacher. 

There must be a revival of evangelistic pas- 
toral visitation. The pastoral call of modern 
times is too largely a social performance. The 
people seem to be satisfied to have it so; while 
many pastors feel that much time is thrown away 
in keeping up the round that is demanded of 
them. There must be a change. The dangerous 
trend must be checked. We must learn to do 
what the fathers did. They did not go from 
house to house to talk glibly of insignificant 
trifles, but to win the people to present, positive 
faith in Jesus Christ; and then to build them up 
in that faith. That is an old path in which we 
must walk. We may not do the thing in just 
the same way that the fathers did, but we must 
do it in some way. 

The "new evangelism" is not an attempt to 
find a new source of power, nor a new substitute 
for the old Gospel. Ultimate sources of power 
are permanent. The thing that is necessary to 
meet the need of changed conditions is a new 
path for the old power. We have been making 
some wonderful discoveries in the realm of elec- 
tricity of late, but no one is seeking for a new 
source of power. What the practical scientist 
has been trying to do is to understand, as best 



126 The Revival. 

he can, the power with which he is dealing, and 
then to open a path for its operation. That is the 
need of the spiritual world. There is a fountain 
of power for the saving of this needy, dying 
world. It is adequate and inexhaustible. God is 
not dead. His arm is not shortened. His force 
is not abated. He is to-day the Almighty. We 
must know Him. We must harmonize with the 
law of His power. Then, too, there is no sub- 
stitute for the old Gospel. There is only one in- 
carnated Son of God. There is only one garden 
of Gethsemane. There is only one mountain 
that is called Calvary. There is only one sacri- 
fice for sin. There is only one risen Lord. There 
is only one hope of eternal life. There is only 
one light upon the "dark river." The Gospel is 
yet the power of God with salvation. Jesus 
Christ has yet power on earth to forgive sin, and 
no one else has ever been found able to exercise 
that power. God has not failed. Jesus Christ 
has not failed. The Holy Ghost has not failed. 
There is an old and adequate power for saving. 
We must know it and find a path for the on- 
moving of that power. We must find a way to 
get men to see themselves, and then to see the 
risen Son of God. That is the problem of the 
age. That is the need of the hour. The old 
power will do all the rest. 



New Paths. 127 

We can not get on as we should without the 
old enthusiasm and singleness of aim that has 
everywhere characterized great soul-winners. I 
like that word enthusiasm. It has the hiss of 
steam in it. There can be little progress and less 
victory without sanctified enthusiasm. The 
Japanese won at the battle of the Korean Straits 
because of the enthusiastic dash, the singleness 
of purpose, the consecration to victory, and the 
whole-souled obedience to orders that character- 
ized the little brown men of the Orient. All con- 
quering souls in all ages have been marked by a 
holy zeal and a sane enthusiasm. The fathers did 
not have the education and culture of the sons, 
but they displayed an earnestness, sincerity, and 
enthusiasm that carried conviction wherever they 
went or spoke. They were men of one purpose, 
as they were men of one book. They believed 
their own message, and made every one else be- 
lieve it. They had the holy boldness, the ma- 
jestic faith, the abandon, and the convincing 
unction of the old prophets. Wherever this 
spirit and consecration of the fathers is found 
you will be sure to find men who with educa- 
tion or without it, with rule or against rule, are 
cleaving their way through the tangled under- 
growth of the old "Black Forest," and subduing 
hearts and lives to the King of kings and Lord of 



128 The Revival. 

lords. Educated workmen ought to be the best 
kind of workmen, and no combination of circum- 
stances can be too hard for a God whose name 
is Almighty. If the "new evangelism" is rilled 
with the old spirit of consecration and enthusiasm 
it can not fail. Pentecost is as possible to-day 
as when Peter preached the plain Biblical sermon 
that won three thousand souls to the Master in 
a single day. The same need exists. The same 
power exists. If the two can be brought to- 
gether over a path which you have discovered, 
you shall witness the same marvels of grace. 

God does not change, but men do. That 
makes readjustment an absolute necessity. While 
the source of power remains unchanged, changed 
conditions often demand a new path for the old 
power. About the most unprofitable and pitiable 
thing in the world is the common experience of 
getting into ruts so deep and monotonous that 
life is shorn of its novelty and power. Marconi 
has erected receiving stations in various parts of 
the earth. These are new paths of the force that 
was unused till the brilliant Italian dreamed his 
dream. We must get out of ruts, and find a way 
to become receiving and sending stations for the 
power of God. That is the problem of the day. 
God needs us, and the world needs us. If the 
Church and the ministry fail to be evangelistic, 



New Paths. 129 

that failure will be a sight to make angels weep. 
The superlative failure comes when one fails to 
meet the end of his creation and the Divine call. 
What would you think of a flour-mill that never 
ground a barrel of flour; of a telegraph office 
that never received or sent a message; of an 
ocean grey-hound that never sailed away from 
the harbor; of a great telescope that was never 
pointed toward the heavens? You would think 
that they were gigantic failures. But they can 
not be half so great a failure as the Church that 
is not evangelistic or the pastor who does not 
win men to Jesus Christ. 

Having said all this, it yet remains true that 
we shall not succeed as we ought till we dis- 
cover some new paths through the deep, dark 
forest that lies between the life of this age and 
the Christ ideal. Changed conditions demand 
some new paths for the old power in which we 
glory. Changed conditions in every realm call 
for [change in methods and machinery. He 
would be a very foolish man who would attempt 
to gather the golden harvest on the prairies of 
Dakota with the sickle, the cradle, or the hand- 
rake reaper, which were good enough for the 
age that produced them. What would you think 
of the man who would insist that the Iowa far- 
mer should plant all his corn by hand and culti- 



130 The: Revival. 

vate it with a hoe; of the man who insisted on 
making watches as watches were made one hun- 
dred years ago; of the deluded enthusiast and 
"old-timer" who would refuse to take the 
"Twentieth-Century Limited" to New York be- 
cause his grandfather came to Illinois in the ^o's 
in a prairie schooner drawn by oxen ? Every one 
knows that a great newspaper, such as lays be- 
fore us the news of the world as we eat break- 
fast every morning, would be impossible with 
the press and methods of Benjamin Franklin. 
What would you think if Chicago were to hold 
fast to the old hand-pump fire-engine which 
served its day and generation fifty years ago; or 
try to supply its two millions of people with 
water by sinking a pump in every back yard? 
Does any one think that a grocery-store could 
be successfully run in New York on the methods 
that do well enough for the cross-roads estab- 
lishment in the mountains of Tennessee ? Would 
a college president be retained beyond the first 
meeting of the Board of Trustees if he could not 
be induced to lay aside the educational methods of 
twenty-five years ago ? Great manufacturing es- 
tablishments compete with their rivals, and dis- 
tance them, by throwing out the old machinery 
and replacing it with that which is up to date 
and the best that human ingenuity and skill can 



New Paths. 131 

produce. Any other policy means failure at last, 
because it means inferior products for a market 
that is overcrowded with the very best. The stu- 
dent of history knows that Napoleon III met his 
Sedan because he was foolish enough to try to 
cope with Germany when he had only the old 
muzzle-loading musket, and his enemy was 
armed with the latest improved needle-guns. 

As these considerations flash their light into 
our souls, what shall we say of the man who 
insists that I shall construct my sermons as the 
fathers constructed theirs ; that a Church shall al- 
ways be run as Churches were managed five 
hundred years ago; that every Sunday-school 
ought to be conducted as Robert Raikes con- 
ducted his; that there is no way of getting a 
man saved except by getting him to the altar; 
that a revival is not genuine unless it is run in 
the old-fashioned mold; that, because the vigor- 
ous preaching of the law resulted in a great re- 
vival movement one hundred years ago, that is 
the type of preaching that must be used in re- 
vival services to-day; and that your revival is 
not above criticism because you use methods 
that John Wesley never thought of? 

We must not forget that methods have Divine 
sanction only so long as they can be worked suc- 
cessfully. It would be consummate folly to bind 



132 The Revival. 

the methods of America on India or Africa. The 
Church in the congested slum district of Chicago 
must not be bound hand and foot with a pro- 
gram that was good enough for rural Ohio fifty 
years ago. If your method will not work where 
you are — no matter how well it worked on your 
last charge — you may be sure that God wants 
you to throw it away and invent something that 
will work. 

But the work must be done. Souls must be 
< | won to Jesus Christ and eternal life. The world 
must be captured for the King. The white har- 
vests must be gathered in. Boys and girls must 
be kept from going away from Christ and the 
Church. The working man must be made to be- 
lieve that the Church wants him and cares for 
him as Christ cares for him. If the old 
methods will not do the business, away 
with them, and invent others that will. 
We are in danger in two particulars. It is an 
easy matter to say that the old revival methods 
are played out; that the very people who most 
need the Gospel will not go near the Church dur- 
ing a series of revival meetings ; that people are 
not interested in the things that interested the 
fathers ; that it is worse than a waste of time to 
hold formal "protracted meetings/' Well! 
what of it ? God has called you to reap the white 



New Paths. 133 

harvest-fields. Will it satisfy Infinite Love to 
say, "I could not reap because the machinery of 
my Church was not well adapted to the age in 
which I was called to work?" If the machinery 
is out of date, there is only one thing to do: in- 
vent some that is up to date. He only is a traitor 
to the Lord of the harvest who comes at last 
with only "withered leaves." And, on the other 
hand, let us have done with unkind words con- 
cerning men who are reaping the harvest, just be- 
cause they do not use "orthodox" machinery. It 
is not well to speak slightingly of "Decision 
Cards," "inquiry rooms," "seasons of silent 
prayer and decision," when the men who are 
using these methods get results while we are la- 
menting our failure. 

As long as a man is true to the fundamentals 
of Methodism and the Gospel he must be al- 
lowed to do his own work in his own field and 
in his own way. Different fields perplexed by 
different problems and presenting diverse char- 
acteristics, must, naturally, he worked differ- 
ently. The people on the boulevard and in the 
slum district need the same Gospel, but it is next 
to impossible to carry that Gospel to them in the 
same way. The same methods will not work 
successfully, year after year, in the same field. 
We live and work in an age that demands nov- 



134 T H £ Revival. 

elty, freshness, variety, and the heart-throbs of 
a living man. A true man must be himself. He 
ought not to be bound by the methods of an- 
other. David can not win if he is encumbered 
with the untried weapons of Saul. The only 
thing that we have a right to insist on is that the 
work be done, and done decently and in some 
sort of order. I do not much care whether you 
hold a protracted meeting or do not hold one; 
whether you invite people to the altar or to an 
inquiry-room, or do not invite them to either; 
whether you invite people to rise for prayers or 
sign a "Decision Card;" whether you draw the 
line sharply, or do not draw it at all; whether 
you hold special services, or make all services 
special — so long as in some way — and that your 
own way — you get men and women, boys and 
girls, to surrender to Jesus Christ. If you can 
not walk in the old paths, we will not find fault 
with you if you will cleave some new ones to 
the goal through* the great "Black Forest" of 
human need. You can do it. In this age of doubt 
and uncertainty, fear and perplexity, there is in 
the minds of men a conviction that Jesus Christ 
is the complement of needy souls. The pendu- 
lum of thought is swinging toward supernatural- 
ism. Men believe in God. They want a revela- 
tion of Him. The boulevard will respond to a 



New Paths. 135 

sane call to repentance. The slum knows its 
need. Men are hungry for God., for light and 
truth. Men may not care as much for dogmas 
and creeds as once they did, but they can be cap- 
tured by love and sympathy. They want to see 
the face of a Savior who has power to save. You 
must win them to yourselves, and then lead them 
to the One for whom their souls long. 

There are various lines along which new 
paths may be blazed. 

The complex, perplexing, disheartening, gi- 
gantic problems of our immense cities demand 
new departures. Our cities are full of young 
people who are away from home and all but dying 
of loneliness and heart-sickness ; of hard-handed 
working people who have come to think that the 
religious crowd is with capital and against labor ; 
of discouraged people who have failed so fre- 
quently that they are certain that neither God nor 
men care for them, nor care what becomes of 
them; of people from foreign lands where they 
learned cordially to hate both the Church and 
the State; of poverty-stricken unfortunates who 
think of themselves as ground beneath the iron 
heel of a cruel destiny ; of weak-willed men who 
have surrendered to the demons of appetite and 
passion; of vast armies of men and women who 
are so overcrowded, overstrained, and over- 



136 The; Revival. 

worked that they have little time, strength, or 
nerve for the things of the higher life ; of women 
who can not properly care for their children be- 
cause they must coin their life-blood into bread. 
No small Christ can save our cities. No half- 
hearted efforts will avail. No vacation plan will 
grapple with the problem. 

This great army of needy, longing, lonesome, 
heart-sick, discouraged, poverty-cursed, careless, 
indifferent, unbelieving men must be won to 
Christ. But they can not be won to the Nazarene 
till they can hear His voice and see His face. We 
must win them to ourselves before they will fol- 
low us to Him. If we are to win them we must 
make them understand that we care. If we can 
make them see that we care for their bodies, per- 
haps they will, after a time, be led to believe that 
we care for their souls. It will avail little to talk 
of the bread of life to a man who is starving, and 
whose children are starving before his very eyes. 
By taking an interest in their life we may be 
able to induce them to take an interest in the 
higher life. If we work for a city of God here 
and now, these destitute men may be led to listen 
to our talk of a city of God somewhere else. It 
is more than likely that the "new evangelism" 
can make large use of the creche, the kindergar- 
ten, the kitchengarden, the sewing-school, the 



New Paths. 137 

gymnasium, the social room, the reading-room, 
the lecture-hall, the library, the open parliament, 
the picture gallery, the "helping hand," the good 
citizenship club, and a score of others that may 
help to break the force of that practical infidelity 
that is cursing our great cities. We do not bring 
these things forward as substitutes for the Gos- 
pel, but as devices that may open the ears of 
men and women to the Gospel, which has come 
almost, to be no Gospel. The first necessity is 
to make men feel that some one cares. God does. 
We must, and we must somehow make men feel 
that we do. There are places where nothing can 
do the work as well as a thoroughly equipped 
open Church. The Gospel of the Son of God is 
a vastly grander somewhat than many people 
have ever dreamed. 

The most observant workers of the age are 
absolutely certain that the Church must do a 
great deal more for the children and youth than 
she has ever done. We must show larger faith in 
childhood conversion and greater zeal in child- 
hood training. Sunday-school evangelism is cer- 
tain to be a most distinguishing characteristic of 
the "new evangelism" which is to usher in a far 
better day, "when the day breaks and the shad- 
ows flee away." 

Scientific investigation has thoroughly estab- 



138 The; Revival. 

lished the fact that the period of adolescence is 
the time of superlative spiritual opportunity. 
Then the soul looks eagerly for a new life, and 
mates with Jesus Christ as readily as birds mate 
together in the springtime. Those are the years 
of greatest impressibility. Then the life is plas- 
tic and may readily be molded according to the 
will of a master mind and hand. If we allow 
those years to pass unimproved we shall witness 
the death of opportunity that will not come again. 
If we do not influence childhood toward faith in 
Jesus Christ, the enemies of the kingdom will 
influence them away from Him. It is impossible 
for a boy or girl to grow to years of maturity and 
remain unprejudiced. There will be soul de- 
velopment one way or the other. It is the busi- 
ness of the Church to use every power she pos- 
sesses to prejudice the young toward faith and a 
holy life. We have a great army of young people 
on our hands. God will hold us responsible for 
the way we treat them. 

All this means that there must be a great tide- 
wave revival of childhood conversion. The re- 
ligious education of the young must receive 
vastly more consideration than ever before. The 
children must be taught that they belong to God 
and that they need never depart from Him. Our 
Sunday-school methods and work must be so re- 



New Paths. 139 

organized as to make discipleship the governing; 
purpose. The teacher must be inspired to be- 
lieve that the supreme business is to win the boys 
and girls to an open stand for Jesus Christ. Out 
of my own experience and observation I am con- 
vinced that any consecrated Sunday-school 
teacher, who lives for it, can win the majority 
of her class to Christ and the Church inside of 
one year. The Junior League has a mission that 
has not yet been undertaken in real earnest. It 
may become a spiritual training-school for bap- 
tized children in a most effective way. Many 
pastors are doing a grand work by preaching a 
five-minute sermon to the younger young people 
before the regular sermon begins. This will 
shorten the regular sermon somewhat, but the 
results will justify the application of the ser- 
monic condenser. It will be worth a vast deal 
to secure the presence of the children at the reg- 
ular Church service. The Church will become 
their Church as it could not otherwise be, and, 
when they have made choice of Jesus Christ as 
Savior and Lord, Church membership will be 
the easy and natural thing. The path of con- 
tinuous evangelism must run through this thicket. 
We know of one Church that organized a 
Junior Choir which became a spiritual force 
among the young people. The work was in the 



140 The Revival. 

hands of a godly man who knew Jesus Christ and 
loved the Church, while, at the same time, he 
was a splendid leader. This choir was composed 
of seventy boys and girls between the ages of 
ten and sixteen. They were gathered from every 
quarter of the Church and community. They 
were vested, that rich and poor might appear 
alike in the services of the Lord's house. They 
had their own work in every service. Before 
the first year had passed, nearly all, who were 
not before professing Christians, accepted Jesus 
Christ and united with the Church, which they 
had come to love and which they all delighted to 
serve. That choir cost that Church something 
like $250, during that first year, but a half hun- 
dred young lives started in service for the king- 
dom justified the expense. Such a choir will do 
your Church good if you can secure the right 
kind of a leader. Try it. 

"Decision-day" in the Sunday-school never 
fails to secure splendid results. It gives an op- 
portunity for such a public stand as always ap- 
peals to the boys and girls. Let me describe such 
a day as may be witnessed in every Church in 
the land. The service was in charge of the pas- 
tor, with every officer and teacher pledged to 
help to the very utmost. After a short lesson 
period, there was some spirited, spiritual singing. 



New Paths. 141 

Then a half dozen short, earnest prayers by as 
many teachers who were yearning to have their 
scholars surrender that day to the King of kings. 
Following an invitation hymn the pastor 
preached a fifteen-minute sermon on the text, 
"What, then, shall I do with Jesus?" He made 
it very personal, and showed the boys and girls 
how they could crucify Jesus Christ or confess 
Him. When that had been made very plain the 
pastor appealed to the teachers, and asked, "How 
many of you would like to covenant with these 
boys and girls to-day and promise them that, if 
they will take a stand for Jesus Christ, you will 
do your very best to help them live for Him and 
realize the Christ ideal ?" Quickly every teacher 
in the room arose. Then, as the teachers stood 
with bowed heads, engaged in earnest prayer, the 
pastor appealed to the school. "How many of 
you young people will answer back to these 
teachers, 'We will take a stand for Jesus Christ 
to-day; we will confess Him, ask Him to for- 
give our sins, dedicate our lives to Him, and try 
to live for Him every day ?" All who will, stand 
on your feet." A multitude were on their feet in 
a half minute. All knelt to join with the pastor 
in a prayer of consecration. "Decision Cards" 
were signed, and on the following Sunday more 
than half a hundred of those boys and girls vol- 



142 The; Revival. 

untarily marched to the altar and united with 
the Church on probation. It was a glorious day, 
and ought to be repeated every year in every 
Church in the land. What a shaking that would 
make among the dry bones ! 

We must make vastly more of our regular 
services, and we must make them far more evan- 
gelistic. Special services are necessary. A pro- 
tracted, soul-winning campaign ought to be held 
in every Church at least once a year. Twice a 
year would be better. I do not greatly care what 
you call these services. If the word "revival" is 
"played out" in your community and repels 
rather than attracts, call the continuous meeting 
"A Mission," "A Recruiting Service," "Pente- 
costal Meetings," "Heart Talks with the Needy," 
"Evenings with Jesus of Nazareth," or "Gospel 
Services." Call them what you will, but have the 
real thing. Plan for it. Swing the Church into 
line for it. Clear the decks for it. Pray for it. 
Sacrifice and work for it. Advertise it. Believe 
for it. Let God lead. Get out of ruts. Do 
something that has not been done in your town 
before. Be sane. Treat the people honestly. 
Avoid tricks. Work as though everything de- 
pended on you. Something will come. There is 
not a Church in the land that will not respond in 
good measure to a sane program for a Gospel 



New Paths. 143 

campaign. Such meetings ought to be held. 
Hold them in your own way. Let the Church 
stand by, and the results will be glorious. 

But while special services are necessary, and 
ought to be held, in some form, in every Church, 
the regular services ought not to be allowed to 
degenerate into mere "meetings." In most 
Churches there is no expectation that men and 
women will decide for Christ at a regular serv- 
ice; and, as a rule, the people are not disap- 
pointed. We usually get what we live for. It 
is a shame to devote nine-tenths of the time of 
a Church to the edification of the saints, to say 
the very best that can be said. There are men 
and women who would like to find God, and they 
do not have a chance. It is a shame to stir the 
souls of men with earnest appeals, and then give 
them no opportunity for the decision that ought 
to be made because of the conviction which has 
been produced. People ought to have a chance 
to make a choice at least once on each Lord's- 
day. That does not mean an altar service or 
the same old hackneyed, worn-out appeal. The 
net must be cast in harmony with the nature of 
the waters and the kind of fish with which the 
waters are filled. Sometimes it will be wise to 
invite those who desire to accept Christ to stand 
on their feet for a moment. Sometimes it will 



144 The Revival. 

be better to ask all to bow their heads in silent, 
earnest prayer, while men and women who feel 
their need of Christ decide the matter in the holy 
of holies of their own hearts. It will be well to 
hold a short prayer-meeting at the close of the 
evening service, occasionally. Call them "De- 
cision Services," and urge all who desire to find 
Christ to remain. Many pastors have an hour 
when seekers may meet them for close heart-to- 
heart talks. One pastor of my acquaintance 
holds a social hour at the close of his evening 
service. This gives young men a place of refuge 
during that most dangerous hour of the week, 
and offers strangers an opportunity to become ac- 
quainted, but, best of all, makes it possible for 
wide-awake workers to bring to the pastor those 
whose hearts have been touched, and who are 
almost persuaded to take a stand for a new life. 
His work has been gloriously successful in the 
heart of a great city. Another makes splendid 
use of a "Fellowship Service" the first Sunday 
in every month. That keeps the matter of de- 
cision and Church membership constantly before 
the people. He rarely ever holds a "Fellowship 
Service" without additions to the Church. This 
same pastor received nearly one hundred into the 
Church on probation during two years in which 
nc special revival-meetings were held. The Ep- 



New Paths. 145 

worth League in the Church of which the writer 
is now pastor, holds "Confession Services" on 
the first Sunday evening of each month. Here 
the probationers are given special opportunity to 
confess Christ; timid ones find it easier to bear 
the cross, and those who never made a profes- 
sion are urged to stand up for Jesus Christ. The 
faith, prayers, and activities of the young people 
center in these services. Variety of leadership 
gives variety of method. Such a service in your 
League will transform it and help you to open 
a new path through the "Old Forest." Try it. 
It will pay. 

One pastor has done good work by organiz- 
ing in his Church a score of Gospel quartettes. 
These are not for singing, but for soul-saving. 
You can do the same. Invite to your study a 
score of your best workers, young or old. Read 
to them the story of the man who was brought to 
Jesus by four friends, who had faith in the power 
of the Master and showed their faith by their 
works. Talk about it. Tell them that you want 
to modernize this miracle. Pray over it. Then 
ask each one present to select three friends, from 
those who are not present, to form a soul-saving 
quartette, of which he is to be leader. See that 
the quartettes meet, organize, read the same story, 
and then select each the name of one friend for 



146 The Revival. 

whom every member of the quartette will pray 
and work till that friend is brought to Jesus. 
Have the leaders report to you whenever the 
"sick man" has decided to see Jesus. That news 
will help you to preach the next Sunday evening 
or to give an opportunity to confess the healing 
Christ at the next prayer-meeting. These quiet, 
continuous, combined, persistent endeavors will, 
sooner or later, bring fire from heaven in the 
sight of men, and men and women to the feet of 
the Son of man who has power on earth to for- 
give sin and transform life. 

These are only some of the suggestions that 
could be given. A living, up-to-date, wide-awake 
pastor will readily think of a hundred other 
things that can be done for the coming of the 
kingdom. Life will make its own molds and 
create its own machinery. The thing that we 
need to remember is that methods have Divine 
sanction only so long as they secure results. You 
are bound to win men to Jesus Christ, but you 
are not bound to do it in any special way. You 
are in duty bound to reap the golden harvest, but 
you are not bound to use anybody's machinery 
to do the job. If the old machinery is out-dated 
and won't work in your field, be brave enough to 
throw it away, and invent new machinery that 
will. Be afraid of nothing except disloyalty to 



Nsw Paths. 147 

the Lord of the harvest. The fields are white 
unto harvest. You must reap them in some way. 
Better use any machinery than see the grain rot 
while you sigh for the dear old times that never 
will come back and never ought to come back 
again. Choose for your motto this day as the 
great "Black Forest" of human need rises som- 
ber before you, "I will find or make a way 
through this forest to the victory and glory be- 
yond." 



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